"Menace in Europe : Why the Continent's Crisis Is America's, Too" (Claire Berlinski)
As I was reading Berlinski's chilling and urgent book, I was struck by a passage about a British psychotherapist who specialized in psychosomatic illness. Apparently, he's treating many, especially women, who are on restrictive vegetarian diets and who suffer from depression anxiety and too many colds.
He believes that at the heart of the food fixation is religion. His patients, having rejected theism and Christianity, are embarking on a desperate quest to conquer the unacceptable prospect of disease, aging and personal extinction.
For ten years he was a Freudian until his own explorations into psychology, philosophy and literature convinced him that love, integrity, compassion and courage - values common to all religions - were more important than he realized.
The focus of his practice now is to impart these common religious values that, he believes, give life meaning. His clients don't even have a vocabulary for these ideas which he calls the true deliverers of the Good Life.
He has his clients to try them out for a week. Without fail, they come back and say, yes, being more honest with the spouses, children and parents did yield meaningful results. They felt more deeply anchored in themselves.
His patients don't come to him in a search for meaning, they come for anxiety or depression. When that's cleared up, he asks them,
"What do you want your life to stand for, what do you think you're here for?"
Almost without exception, they get fascinated by that and do another year with him.
"I love that stage of work."
Berlinski comments that given a choice between the British vegetarianism and high colonics, is it any wonder that so many disaffected are turning to Islam for meaning/