Christian Unity and the Practice of Psychotherapy

In doing some fairly informal research on this topic as part of this post I learned that this issue goes WAY back...

Many people may be surprised to know that there have been large schisms taking place in the Christian community basically since its institution nearly 2000 years ago (subtract the time it took for Christianity to actually be practiced legally in the Roman Empire); hence, the various councils that have taken place since (first being the First Council of Nicea in 325 AD). The largest and most relevant to today's post occurred in 1517 with Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation, a revolution that led to tens of thousands of Christian sects forming ever since.

The practice of counselling has been around even longer. Hippocrates, (460-370 AD) ancient Greek physician known today through the Hippocratic Oath, wrote several times about treating what we would now call anxiety and depression. The Greek philosophical traditions of Stoicism and Epicureanism were developed in direct response to anxia corda (anxiety of the heart). In the Bible we see many expressions of what could be called sustained periods of anguish (Job 3:10: narrowness of spirit).