The Gnostic Care of the Soul

Go with Professor DeConick on a textual dig, as she brings to life Gnostic ritual practices from ancient sources. She considers whether ancient Gnostic initiation and its ritual therapies might characterize our earliest form of psychotherapy. The evidence suggests that, prior to Freud, Jung, the behaviorists, and the cognitive psychologists of our modern world, the Gnostics developed shamanic-like therapies to resolve anxiety and stabilize the human condition, although their therapies functioned within the context of religion, rather than science and the counselor’s office. The variety of Gnostic myths and accounts of their activities focus on the origin of the human soul or psyche, how it came to be damaged, and how healing can take place within the context of religious initiation. Here lies the beginning of religion as therapy for the damaged self.