Angela,
Code: Select all
If you don't want to use hypnotherapy, don't. What I have tried to clarify for you, and others, is that there is nothing inherently "un-Orthodox" or "demonic" about hypnosis as a therapeutic psychological technique for a variety of psychological infirmities. Of course, some people think that using insulin for diabetes or Prozac for endogenous depression is "demonic," and no scientific data or rational discourse will persuade them otherwise. Such people are like the heterodox "Christian Scientists" and "Church of Scientology'" types, who are opposed to the clinical science of medicine--including that branch of medicine that specializes in the treatment of psychiatric disorders, psychiatry. Their stock in trade is usually ignorance, fear, and disinformation.
I did some research on the quotation that Cyprian used about "hypnosis" from Elder Nectarius of Optina. I was correct. The quote appeared in the context of a conversation that the Elder had with the Russian spiritist and occultist Vladimir Bykov.* Bykov was leading Satanic seances, which included wife swapping and group "hypnosis" parties of some sort. This was the context in which the Elder began to reveal to Bykov the error of his Satanic religious practices, leading to his conversion and subsequent work against Russian spiritism. Can we interpret this case, correctly, to imply that modern clinical hypnosis, as it is used today in clinical medicine, is necessarily un-Orthodox or Satanic? That seems like quite a semantic overgeneralization.
I could not find any references to hypnosis in my own books by, or about, St. John of Kronstadt, and St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, so I will need some help from Cyprian to find the references he mentioned. I am also curious about the scriptural references to hypnosis that he mentioned in his "Orthodox" condemnation of clinical hypnosis.*Elder Nektary of Optina. (St. Herman's 1998. pp. 287-305.)