Authentic cross-cultural approaches to mental health treatment are urgently needed to restore it to its rightful place as an effective healing modality. Modern Western psychology asserts a monopoly by silencing traditional “sciences of the soul” and imposing itself on a diverse humanity, with its “one size fits all” approach. This is a hegemony that must be opposed, but the call to “decolonize” therapy is ineffective without a thorough diagnosis of what has gone wrong with psychology today. It is now apparent that we need to return to an authentic metaphysical outlook that is accepted across the wisdom traditions of the world. The reclaiming of epistemological pluralism that is grounded in the sacred provides a remedy for the modern impoverishment of psychology so that, in recognizing the fullness of what it means to be human, it can secure our true well-being.
Authentic cross-cultural approaches to mental health treatment are urgently needed to restore it to its rightful place as an effective healing modality. Modern Western psychology asserts a monopoly by silencing traditional “sciences of the soul” and imposing itself on a diverse humanity, with its “one size fits all” approach. This is a hegemony that must be opposed, but the call to “decolonize” therapy is ineffective without a thorough diagnosis of what has gone wrong with psychology today. It is now apparent that we need to return to an authentic metaphysical outlook that is accepted across the wisdom traditions of the world. The reclaiming of epistemological pluralism that is grounded in the sacred provides a remedy for the modern impoverishment of psychology so that, in recognizing the fullness of what it means to be human, it can secure our true well-being.
"Samuel Bendeck Sotillos is the only psychotherapist that I know of that works from a universal and timeless ontological orientation."—Wolfgang Smith, Physicist, and Mathematician, author of Physics: A Science in Quest of an Ontology
“Finally a book from a psychotherapist willing to explore the indispensable link between mental health and spirituality. Bendeck Sotillos reminds us that the essence of our well-being depends, ultimately, on being grounded in holiness, or at least in our best personal effort to cultivate spiritual virtues. Modern psychology, in its complicated quest for sanity, has tried to reinvent the wheel, when all we need to do is restore the healing sap of the heavenly circle girding human life. The author offers profound insights about traditional ways in which we can be reconciled to the timeless essence of who we really are, without which no lasting cure is possible. In doing so, he exposes the nature of modern man’s alienation from his immortal being—the root cause of all our anxiety, depression, and neuroses. To delve into this enlightening book is to rediscover the providential thread of Ariadne that leads us out of the labyrinth of ego estrangement towards the immortal source of human joy.”
—Mark Perry, professional translator, author of The Mystery of Individuality: Grandeur and Delusion of the Human Condition
