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I am delighted to notice that more healers and counselors are calling themselves Alchemcial Healers, or use the the term "Alchemy" to describe the work they do. The alchemy of spiritual and physical healing and transformation, or "Alchemical Therapy" implies that mind-body-soul is one word, one entity. We were all told the well known story of the alchemical process as children; spinning straw into gold. Remember Rumpelstiltskin?

Problems impact us in different ways depending upon our emotional investment in them. Some problems have huge emotional weight to them, and some don’t. When a problem has no negative emotional component, then we aren’t carrying any thoughts of “right” and “wrong.” Perhaps common activities such as assembling a jigsaw puzzle or building a house or changing the doing the dishes could fall into this category. It’s not wrong, for example, that the dishes need to be scrubbed with steel wool.

I have a friend (I'll call her Nancy) who has been in a constant state of fear about one thing or another for the past few months: projects she is working on, relationships she has. She has been through a large number of stressors in the last few months: moving, new friends, etc. Furthermore, she has a history of psychosomatic illnesses, and in recent weeks she has developed a sharp increase in the amount of bodily problems she has had.

My 22 year old son (Forrest) with Down syndrome is grieving the death of a long time older neighbor and friend who lived with Alzhiemer's for many years. Forrest and Julie were great together,neither one ever seemed to notice that the other was different or "disabled". Julie was a scrabble champion and Forrest excels in Chess, so "connect-four" was fair compromise on rainy afternoons. Julie's pre-Alzheimer's life was that of a socially engaged wealthy widow with many friends. Forrest loves going to the movies and Julie would frequently tag along.

The book "Freud vs. God" has a provoking subtitle: How Psychiatry Lost Its Soul and Christianity Lost Its Mind, which is the thesis in this book written ten years ago by Dan Blazer. Perhaps the sister field of Psychotherapy needs a debate about restoring its soul. "For the first half of the twentieth century there was controversy, argument, and struggle between theologians and psychiatrists. For the last few decades, devout Christian pastoral counselors and devout dynamic psychotherapists have behaved toward each other like 2-year-olds engaged in "make nice" parallel play." writes GEORGE E.