By examining Greek roots of the word psychotherapy we see that psychotherapy and mysticism have more of a shared perspective than first meets the eye. Therefore, psychotherapy may be defined as the process of attending to the soul. In practice, most psychotherapy is good at attending to the phenomenal level of individuals' lives, but not as good at helping people explicitly recognize and directly experience their Divine connection with all. Here, the criticism that psychotherapy is distinctly different from mysticism has some validity. On the other hand, mysticism, in practice, is often just as out of balance.
Mysticism can become a path used to disconnect from oneself and others in the name of spirituality.
Some people use a mystical focus on the spiritual and Divine to avoid the sometimes painful and difficult experience of simply being human. Through investigation of the meanings of both psychotherapy and mysticism, an authentic combination of the two comes to seem natural, and it is the split between them that is revealed as a false dichotomy. Psychotherapy, at its most powerful and authentic, always includes the soul, and mysticism, by its very nature, leaves nothing out. You may reach him by E-mail or through his Website .