Psychological Healing by Fr. Glenn Gomez, SVD

Though he’s the least well-known from the bunch of speakers, Fr. Glenn Paul M. Gomez, SVD (Society of the Divine Word), a doctor of clinical psychology, gave the most educational talk, academically speaking, by providing the psychological background to the three talks about healing the self, family, and community. His basic point is that, in the pursuit of healing, one must heal the self first, because if one heals the self, healing the family, the community, and the world would be a lot easier.

Excerpt:

When we talk of the self, we talk of the total self. That means body, emotion, mind and spirit. If you heal what’s inside of you, it would be easy to heal what’s outside.

In 1956, a Harvard University research studied the effect of parental love on 126 healthy men. The men were told to rate their relationship with their parents from “very close” to “warm and friendly” to “tolerant” to “strained and cold.” The subjects were followed up 36 years later in 1991, to see the correlation between parental relationship and health.

The results? Of the men who had % a warm and close relationship with their parents, 53% were healthy, while 47% had a major illness. Of those to whom only the mother was warm and close, 18% were healthy and 82% were sick. Of those to whom only the father was warm and close, 9% were healthy and 91% were sick. Of those to whom both parents scored law in warmth and closeness, 100% of the subjects were sick (none healthy).

The family is important. Broken relationships should be healed.

The psychologist Wayne Dyer, who grew up fatherless, knew this, that’s why he reconciled with his father, although he had to do that part in the cemetery.

We don’t have to follow the statistics. We need to reconcile with our parents. We need to forgive them.

Another psychologist, family therapist, Virginia Satir, said we need four hugs a day for survival. That’s just survival. She said we need eight for maintenance, 12 for growth, and a total of 14 hugs a day. There is healing power in touch.