On psychotherapists’ demons and the corresponding virtues: From the desert into the therapy room

Abstract

Professional and ethical reasons impose on psychotherapists the obligation to properly regulate (both during their professional training, as well as later on) the elements of their personal functioning which could potentially harm the psychotherapy process or clients. These include emotional-motivational impulses that were exhaustively dealt with, under the notion of passions, by the hermitic literature from the first centuries of Christianity, and that were later expressed as a classification of the seven cardinal sins. Drawing on two writings by the so-called hermit psychologist Evagrius of Pontus, this article in the first part describes seven “demons” or passions (gluttony, lust, greed, wrath, envy, sloth and pride) and their implications for psychotherapists. In the second part, the article presents seven virtues that are opposite to the seven passions or sins and help to deal with them (temperance, chastity, charity, patience, kindness, dili- gence and humility). For each virtue, questions for the psychotherapist’s self-re- flection are added. The article is an attempt to apply to the context of the modern psychotherapist the experiences and insights of hermits in their struggle with demons and bad thoughts (gk. logismoi) on the path to the state of equanimity (gk. apatheia).