Is uncovering hidden memories the KEY to emotional and spiritual well-being?
In keeping with the Freudian foundation of all “inner healing,” Fred and Florence Littauer’s book, Freeing Your Mind from Memories that Bind, presents the thesis that uncovering hidden memories is the key to emotional and spiritual well-being. They suggest that any “memory gaps” from child hood indicate one has probably been abused (and very likely, sexually). By that definition we’ve all been abused. Most of us can’t remember each house we’ve lived in, each school attended, every teacher and class mate, every family vacation when we were children. To teach, as the Littauers do, that these “memory gaps” indicate periods of abuse that have been covered up by the mind is contrary to common sense and is without scientific verification or biblical support.
The Littauers, like so many others in this field, base their approach upon the so-called four temperaments. This long-discredited personality theory evolved from the ancient Greek belief that the physical realm was composed of four elements: earth, air, fire and water. Empedocles related these to four pagan deities, while Hippocrates tied them to what were considered at that time to be the four bodily humors: blood (sanguine), phlegm (phlegmatic), yellow bile (choleric) and black bile (melancholy). These characteristics were connected to the signs of the zodiac.
There never was any scientific basis for the four temperaments. Yet many Christian psychologists and lay “healers” swear by them today, making them the basis of “personality classification” and the key to behavioral insights. As the Bobgans point out, however, in their excellent latest book, “Four Temperaments, Astrology & Personality Testing”:
“The word temperament itself comes from the Latin word “temperamentum” which meant “proper mixing.” The idea was that if the bodily fluids were tempered, that is, reduced in their intensity by balancing the humors with each other, then healing would occur....
Even the positions of various planets were thought to alter the fluids for better or worse....
The four temperaments had virtually been discarded after the Middle Ages ...until a few lone souls discovered them among relics of the past and marketed them in twentieth-century language.... [Recently], the temperaments have been enjoying a revival...among astrologers and evangelical Christians....[T]he four temperaments are that feature of astrology made palatable to Christians.”
Like other Christian psychologists and lay inner healers, the Littauers do not derive their theory and practice from a careful exegesis of Scripture, but quote an isolated verse now and then in an attempt to give the appearance of biblical support. For example, they quote part of a verse—“I, the Lord, search the minds and test the hearts of men” (Jer 17:10, TEV)—beneath their second chapter title, “Searching Ourselves.” In fact, this scripture opposes the idea of searching ourselves. It declares that only God can search and understand our hearts: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the LORD search the heart...to give every man according to...the fruit of his doings” (17:9-10, KJV).
The context of these two verses gives the lie to the application made not only by the Littauers but by other well-meaning “inner healers.” God curses those who trust in anything else and blesses those who trust only in Him. He promises that those who trust in Him “shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that [never shall] cease from yielding fruit”(Jer 17:8). A fruitful life (love, joy, peace, etc.) is produced by the working of the Spirit of God in the lives of those who surrender their otherwise deceitful hearts to Him! And nowhere does the Bible say that taking personality tests and learning one’s “temperament” aids His work in us. (Dave Hunt)
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