Freud and American Liberal Protestantism: A study of the religion and health movement in the United States the twentieth century

The effects and results of Freudian theory on American Liberal Protestantism in the United States from the turn of the century to the late 1990's were investigated.;The methodology used was interdisciplinary as pertinent data and information was spread throughout the fields of history, medicine, psychology, sociology, religion and theology.;The mainline liberal Protestant Churches had the vision to adopt Freudian theory for their day-to-day ministries. As a result, congregants and patients in hospitals have benefited from the healing ministries that were eventually developed. The first experiment took place in 1906 at the Emmanuel Church in Boston. When the pastor, the Rev. Elwood Worcester, announced from the pulpit that he and a psychiatrist colleague from Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Isador Coriat, would be available on Monday morning for consultations, 198 people appeared! A need was certainly uncovered.;Without compromising their theological position, the liberal Protestant churches went forward and embraced Freud's theory of the unconscious and under the leadership of the Presbyterian Church, specifically the Rev. Anton T. Boisen, discovered that the use of depth psychology by trained clergy had enormous positive and productive results on congregants and patients in hospitals.;With the help of intellectuals such as Seward Hiltner and Helen Flanders Dunbar, Boisen was successful in developing a medical model of instruction called Clinical Pastoral Education or CPE, where the patient or the congregant is treated as a whole being, a body with a spiritual mind, inseparably united as one. This model was initially put into practice, with great success, in large hospitals. Today, the model flourishes and as a requisite to ordination, most Protestant denominations require their candidates to register for a minimum of one unit of CPE.;CPE has also had an impact on the medical profession through psychosomatics. It is increasingly apparent to the medical profession that the mind plays a significant role in the state of the body and that treatment of people as pathological organisms without taking the mind into consideration is mostly ineffectual. Consequently, courses, sometimes taught by hospital Chaplains, are being offered at medical schools throughout the country emphasizing compassion and the unity of the mind to the body.;The Freudian strategy of the American Liberal Protestant Church has had a permanent positive impact and effect. It is a continuing growth movement. The rupture between religion and medicine is being mended, but more importantly, the Church is becoming more successful in the healing of souls.