Page 25 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 9
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by giving it its own name. The spirit of the word mities. Psychopathology, in its diversity of per-
is what makes soul and person synonymous. sonal deformities, may be viewed as the conflict
This word is always a moral word, that is, a word inside the anthropological nature, the result of
reflecting the law. This law reflects man‘s destiny the illusion of reducibility of a person to nature
to live in love and union with God. “The hu- (under the influence of evil), and, as a conse-
man person was called,” according to St. Maxi- quence, the equation of person and nature.
mus, “to reunite by love created with uncreated A process of therapy is aimed to reveal this ir-
nature, showing the two in unity and identity reducibility of the person to its own nature, and
through the acquisition of grace” (V. Lossky). the person‘s inequality to its distortions. The
Therefore, when a person expresses him/herself evidence of personal reality in the activity of
with moral word and love, only then does it be- the moral word and in the creative activity of
come synonymous with the soul. love is the evidence of God-likeness in a per-
son. We do not objectivise or reduce this perso-
“Even when [a man] removes himself as far as nal evidence to personal ‘attributes’ or ‘positive’
possible from God, and becomes unlike Him in personal features. It is a constant living process,
His nature, he remains a person” (V. Lossky). which establishes man in his likeness of God,
This means that the image of God in man is in- gives inexpressible joy and a condition of spirit
destructible. “Thus, whether he chooses good which gives the person energy to live and create,
or evil, whether he tends to likeness or unlik- but not to fix ‘personal traits’ as obtained and
ness, man possesses his nature freely, because make them static. The indefinable, mysterious
he is a person created in the image of God” (V. character of God-likeness, and at the same time
Lossky). its truly human character, is immediately re-
cognized by the soul, which seeks to maintain
In Christian psychotherapy the irreducibility this synonymous correspondence, and by this
of person to nature no longer has its apophatic to make the ability to live in God-likeness a part
character and its definition through negation. It of the psychic reality of a patient.
acquires the status of something knowledgeable The goal of Christian therapy is the person it-
and open to formation, though not through its self. Our aim in therapy is to reach the person
substantial characteristics, but rather by reve- in a patient and not its attributes.
aling and defining itself in relation to its own
nature. In this irreducibility to soul, the person II. The nature of evil is personal.
appears by means of the word. This is the word “The problem of evil… is reduced to that of the
that opens up the truth about man, of his Divi- evil-doer. An evil-doer is not an inadequacy
ne likeness. The mediating role in revealing and of being, a lack of essentiality, no more inde-
defining the deepest knowledge of the person ed than he is … an essence… The evil-doer is a
in the psychotherapeutic frame is given to the person, someone” (V. Lossky)
moral word as the instrument of demarcation There is always person and personal choice be-
between good and evil, the means of disengage- hind the evil. If there is no death as an outcome
ment with evil and sin. for person, having been exposed to evil treat-
ment, there is trauma as sinful transformation
The fundamental nature of the personal relati- and distortion of the person. Psychic trauma re-
onship in which the soul dwells is love. A per- flects the personal changes as effects of the ma-
son, whose relationship with the other is based lignity of the others. Personal transformations
on love, leads a life in which there is no split occur as the result of the sinful attitude, whose
within the anthropological nature of the person. main goal is annihilation, repression, desecrati-
Evil in any form is always an assault on love. The on and corruption of love as the original basis
personal nature of evil creates a person extra- for human relations.
neous to the human nature, and not rooted in The life of the human soul is reflected in the hu-
anthropology. This personal form is doomed to man person as the image and likeness of God.
destruction with the accumulation of its defor- All kinds of personal distortions arise and bear
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