Cláudia Bernhardt Pacheco: Spirit pathology is the big contribution Keppian psychoanalysis has to bring to everyone that is dealing with spiritual problems.
Richard Lloyd Jones: Now, the Stop Radio Network presents another episode in our continuing series on therapeutic theology with Cláudia Bernhardt Pacheco and Richard Lloyd Jones. I'm very pleased to have with me again Cláudia Bernhardt Pacheco. We are here in the library of the, we're not in our normal studio, in the library of the International Society of Analytical Trilogy, just underneath Cláudia's office.
This library was one of the first places I came when I came to Brazil. And it's full of like books about psychoanalysis and psychosomatics and history and theology. It's like a very rich atmosphere. It's very deeply wood paneled, very deep, dark, almost a mahogany type wood that we're here in with the glass doors behind which are all sorts of books. And there's a number of final projects of the students who have been doing the post-graduation courses in Analytical Trilogy.
Some of this information I'm giving you, you won't have a contact with because you don't know so much.
Cláudia: But they can use their imagination. They use their
Richard: imagination. And you can also do a lot of research on our sites.
And Cláudia and I have been doing a number of programs on that radio station.
If you listen to Stop Radio, you hear Cláudia Pacheco all the time, and we're talking about many of these themes. Do you know we've had like, I think it's almost a million
Cláudia: hits on our
Richard: radio station. It's good
Cláudia: to know. A
Richard: lot of people in 192 countries have listened to our programs. Wow, good. It's quite impressive, actually,
Cláudia: when you start to see how Dr.
Keppe's work
Richard: of Analytical Trilogy and Cláudia Bernhardt Pacheco's work in analytical geology is really entering the world. This is very
Cláudia: beautiful. It encourages me.
Richard: Yeah, good. We need encouragement sometimes.
Cláudia: Yeah, we do.
Richard: So we have been talking, Cláudia and I, for a number of weeks about how to do a series of classes on this new book of Dr. Keppe, Psychotherapy and Exorcism.
And this is a book I think that Dr. Keppe is very personally very excited about because we've been sending it out to many theologians, priests, psychiatrists, psychologists,
Cláudia: theological schools, rabbis, paranormal
Richard: researchers, for them to understand that this idea that exorcists and many theologians have that possession, demonic influence, only happens once in a while in a few people, that this is not true, that actually we are all influenced spiritually all the time without perceiving it.
We don't have much contact with that. What we're trying to do in our series here is the scientific analysis of spiritual phenomena, especially the question of mental illness and demonic possession. So this is where we'll hope to get, but not to think of demonic possession as just the rare cases we see in the movies, but that it's a factor for all of us.
So what we're hoping to do here is have a scientific analysis of spiritual phenomena, especially the question of mental illness and demonic possession, and remembering that demonic possession is not something that only happens in the movies, that this kind of diabolical influence is everywhere in our modern society. So this is what we'll we'll talk more
Cláudia: about and this is totally a new approach, Richard, a totally new approach.
Lately the pope Francis, Francisco, he has been talking and trying to introduce this concept inside the the mind of the religious people, bishops, cardinals, mostly of the religious all over the world don't speak about the devil any longer. Father Amort who was one of the main or maybe the most famous exorcist, official exorcist of Rome, the Vatican, he was talking a lot about possessions.
But even Father Amorth did a distinction between possession and mental illness, possession and social illness. So they didn't bring together this transdisciplinary science was absolutely built by Dr. Keppe because he has in his background, both backgrounds, the theological and philosophical and scientific, the threefold background.
Richard: And the Catholic theology, I think, is the most advanced theology. Yes,
Cláudia: all the Catholics, and Rome, and even the Orthodox Catholics, they are very much deep
Richard: in what they...
Sure, and even the original Protestants come from the Catholic Church too.
Cláudia: Yeah, the Christians, the Christians, they are
Richard: all very deep in their knowledge. So as you're watching, you'll have a chance to hear more about Dr. Keppe's work. It's deep and it's really, really important on our planet today. Then sitting across the table from me is Cláudia Bernhardt Pacheco, who joined Keppe Society early on, 1974, working first as Keppe's assistant, but soon attending clients herself in Keppe's innovative psychotherapeutic treatment.
So Keppe, in the pursuit of understanding the nature of human problems, started with the theological and realized that it was too limited for him, that he needed a more scientific approach, not just theological. So he entered into the area of psychotherapy to try to treat clients individually and in group sessions in scientific ways, not just their theological questions, but their economic questions, relationship problems, health problems.
Cláudia: Psychosomatic problems, mental
Richard: illnesses. Especially a big focus of Dr. Keppe's work. So we're dealing here with a lot of knowledge and a lot of wisdom from many, many, many years of experience. So he created his own interdisciplinary science he called Analytical Trilogy, which he named for the union of science with philosophy and theology. So this is now not something that's only theological, only philosophical, only scientific, but all three of those aspects together, which gives it a lot of ability, I think, capacity to understand the human problems and human issues.
Cláudia: This shift started in 77.
Richard: 77.
Cláudia: When he realized that he...
Richard: You were there at the beginnings of this, Cláudia. Yes, I was. Put us
Cláudia: in that. You're a witness. Put us in that place. Not only a witness, but I have been participating into this beautiful journey. And well in 1977 he was researching and researching, always digging and digging like an archaeologist of the mind, and he discovered that it was like an inspiration that the human being didn't suffer from an unconscious as Freud put, as an instinctive or innate kind of unconscious life or unconscious source of pathologies and desires, but having like an instance called unconscious.
But what mainly was like a cause or a manifestation of humans' pathology was what Dr. Keppe called inversion. Human beings are upside down, perceiving, reacting, living upside down. So after this intuition he told me, Cláudia, now I must study even more and start all over from the beginning. All the understanding of human soul must be reviewed, reanalyzed and corrected under this perspective.
And that's how he started in 77. He was able in the end of 79 to complete a new body of psychoanalysis theory, his own integral psychoanalysis, that then he called Analytical Trilogy because he it encompassed also the fields of philosophy, metaphysics and theology. Yeah
Richard: it's a comprehensive and you know
Cláudia: who they call the inverted, the big inverted, Lucifer, Lucifer, he's upside down.
Richard: Yeah so this idea of inversion we'll get into, we could do a whole course just on that concept alone, but the idea that we see the world upside down is so clear. One of my students was telling me he was just in New York and Boston recently, doing a little presentation there. He was talking about the economy there. They have so little unemployment now, such a low level of unemployment in the United States now, that they're having problems with the economy because they don't have people enough to do other work.
All the jobs are full. So he was telling me that they are talking in the economy now how you need a certain level of unemployment to make the economy work. And I was saying to him, but that's totally crazy. Somebody being unemployed, how can that be good for the economy? You see the economy, the way it's structured is inverted. This idea that somebody could not be
Cláudia: working and that's good for the economy, this is a crazy idea.
It has an inversion in the very root. The first cause of it is inverted. So
Richard: that's just, I just want to give a little example of how that is, because you can see that in every area of life, including theology and this question that we're entering now of Lucifer and the demons. This idea of the devil, Lucifer, Satan, many names, Beelzebub. I think there's many different names for this being, and maybe there are different beings.
This I don't know. But is this just a myth, a product of hallucination? There are many people even in the church who believe that the devil as a an entity does not really exist, it's more a mythology or something. How
Cláudia: how Wilfred, being a famous psychoanalyst, said to hallucinate is not only to imagine and see and hear things that apparently do not exist, but it's mostly deny what is obvious, what we hear we see and we sense with our five common regular senses, but also with our intuitive sense, our consciousness, our perception, our intuition.
So what have been happening is this form of hallucination since the you know this started mostly officially with Descartes I guess,
Richard: Descartes 1600s, and
Cláudia: then it was like growing and growing, and in the 19th century this was already something very well established, that demons, demonology was something like belonging to the past, a kind of a backwatered view of life and spirituality. Yeah we
Richard: don't believe that
Cláudia: anymore.
20th century, my god, that was really a total hallucination in all areas, because then everybody denied the existence of evil in the world. Yeah and evil being something like a being,
Richard: a creature. Yeah so
Cláudia: but then we have to think, okay so people started to say evil exists is only inside man or the human being, it does not exist outside the human being, in the human mind, and this was a
Richard: very disservice.
Yeah or the in the the sort of the environmental movement it was characterized as being in the corporations, in the government, in the in
Cláudia: the laws, in the regulations, that the the evil doesn't come from another influence, it's just a few people who want to make too much money, a kind of a greed thing, it was seen as that too, but seeing evil in its purest forms and almost like uh denying this must be very evil, you know, denying the existence of evil, denying the presence as Malachi, Malachi Martin quoted, the presence, the presence, the evil presence of this being, it's noticeable, it's it's very obvious.
So people started to deny what is obvious and and but to understand this more it's important to have a more metaphysical philosophy or metaphysical way of thinking which goes to the pre prime or primary causes of everything. Yeah so if you go and you analyze what is the cause of this and then what causes this and then what is the what is the first cause of the phenomena, so if you study the first origin of evil is must be from a being, an intelligent being, willful, intelligent, and this must be not god, because god is only good, beautiful and truthful, so god in in his essence does not allow any any particle of evil or suffering, no suffering coming from god whatsoever.
So where does it come from this evil uh force, this malignant, suicidal, homicide or destructive force, if we don't have it in our nature? So here comes physiology, biology, genetics to state that all forces from nature, all forces from life are meant to preserve and to reinforce and propagate
Richard: life, and
Cláudia: propagate life, to preserve and propagate life, never ever to destroy it.
Even
Richard: the sexual instinct is about this, right,
Cláudia: all all instincts are for life, not against. So this evil instinct does not come from our genetics, from nature, and even much less from its creator, which is god. So what happened then? So we need to pay attention to this revelation we get or we got from our ancient civilizations that always for millennia knew about evil spirits or evil transcendent or invisible, physically invisible, not sensorial beings, spiritual beings.
Richard: Dr. Keppe says here that we ourselves, meaning you and he and the members of his society, when beginning our work did not believe in spirits and demons as an influence on the human being. We thought those ideas were extremely naive, that they eliminated man's responsibility for his own errors, that it would be like putting the blame on the devil. Well you can see this comes a lot from the influence I think of the Austrian school, right, of the
Cláudia: all the
Richard: scientific existentialists, right, we create
Cláudia: our existence, all this, all psychologies, Richard, they never consider spirit pathology.
The psychologists and the psychology schools, the psychological orientations, psychoanalysis, even mostly psychiatry, they do not consider spirit pathology.
Richard: So what led you and Dr. Keppe to that area? How did you, I mean, if the whole training of psychoanalysis is that the individual and problems with the parents, problems with trauma from childhood, biological problems, what led you guys to to go deeper
Cláudia: into that experimental practice of psychoanalysis?
Yeah we were lucky, Richard, because we have always had hundreds of clients to attend in our society, people who came to us suffering with mental illnesses, psychosis, neurosis, psychosomatic illnesses, because since his the beginning of dr Keppe's work he was very much able to heal people from psychosomatic diseases. He worked in the hospital of the university of São Paulo for many years and and there he was like a major psychotherapist and psychosomatic researcher.
And so uh quoting again being he said what heals is the truth, so don't stick to theories when you see a client, but go to the truth, to the deeper truth, because only truth heals the patient. And this was a psychiatrist and a psychoanalyst speaking, not god, not Jesus, and Jesus said the same. So when people came to to Capi because he had this very very deep belief in in Jesus Christ and his teachings, so when people came in and asked him how come you can be a psychoanalyst and be Christian at the same time, yeah, and he said
Richard: as if the two were totally
Cláudia: incompatible, exactly because Freud was a an atheist.
So he said well if I have to choose Jesus or Freud I will always pick up Jesus teachings, so there is no problem with that. And doing so he was able to heal more people and faster because he had Jesus Christ's spirit of his teachings. Yeah now going back to what I was saying, you asked me how did you get there, it was like through the inner self of human beings, there inside the human being we found that Lucifer or many other followers of Lucifer and Demons and devils are hidden there inside us, doing a lot of harm.
Richard: Appearing through our ideas or the way we speak about it. Others. And
Cláudia: not only through hallucinations, deliriums. No. Not only in the so-called psychotic people. No, no, no. In the psychotic, this is absolutely clear. As in the hysterical patients. It's very clear, the action of the devil. And some people used to say oh this is just a theatrical uh form of expression, people are like under suggestion, uh psychological suggestion, watching too many movies or something like this, or
Richard: wanting to call attention towards
Cláudia: them.
Yeah and but uh the psychotic, the schizophrenic, the the deliriums, the themes of the deliriums, they were always evil, and mental illness is a form, it's a kind of like it's a matter of degree let's say. So you can be with your psychosis under control and be just a neurotic, but you can develop this if you do not pay attention, if you do not understand what is happening, what is going on in your mind, you can become a psychotic.
You can become an epileptic patient even. You can become a possessed, a true possessed person.
Richard: By following ideas that are crazy, by thinking things, by allowing these strong emotions to dominate, we can
Cláudia: become possessed.
Richard: Absolutely. I see this, you know, Cláudia.
Cláudia: Because possession always comes with what they call negative emotions, negative behaviors, destructive behaviors, lack of ethics, like psychotic, like psychopaths, killers, suicidal, addicted, like substance abusers.
Richard: People who get furious for nothing.
Cláudia: Compulsive behavior, so there are many many expressions of mental illness which we know they are always involving spiritual components. In Brazil we have many many people that follow that kind of, it's not a true religion, but it's a sort of a spiritualist, spiritualistic activities where they have those mediums, they receive the...
Richard: The spirits of the dead ancestors
Cláudia: or...
Yeah, all sorts of... Yeah. So here in Brazil, it's so well known, this activity. But do you know what happened when we received clients coming from spiritual, like spiritist background from these places where they receive and they call and they are medium and they have this...
Richard: They call the spirits, don't they?
Cláudia: They call, they receive, they incorporate. They were much, much more difficult to get healed.
Much, much complicated. They could even be like in key positions in society. They were like professors in universities. They were politicians, directors of enterprises. But they had this kind of disturbance, spiritual disturbance, that ended up by destroying their their career, their profession, or their health, physical health. And how did you
Richard: come to see these kinds of reactions that people had as spiritual?
A normal psychologist would just say it's it's a delirium, it's a chemical imbalance, it's a, what led you to say is it is it your theological background that led you guys to say that this this has to be something spiritual? Not
Cláudia: only theological, but we did what being advised, he said observe the client, yeah talk to the client, see the truth. Why should we say no you are not seeing anyone, you are not seeing anything, you're not hearing anything, of course.
So only this, Richard, because if you go to a doctor and you tell I'm hearing voices he will give you immediately a very strong at
Richard: a psychotic medicine, yeah, or
Cláudia: they even institutionalize, yeah
Richard: sure, they put
Cláudia: you under this under situations that are unbearable for you, yeah, it will destroy you, your personality, your health,
Richard: your future, your life. There's when you listen to beyond then there was something, but I think there's something here too, Cláudia, about your you and dr Keppe, your belief, faith, that led you to say well let's listen to this, let's really try and understand what this is instead of just
Cláudia: dismissing.
I I would say that we were led more uh by our scientific attitude and we wanted really humanitarianly speaking, our humanitarian side, yeah, to um to to support you know the the degree of suffering of a person who hears voices and sees the spirits and they don't know what to do with it, it's so immense the suffering, that we wanted to help them.
So we started to consider the possibility of them speaking the truth and really be seeing and watching and hearing spirits. So so simple as this, we started to support them in this journey, be at their side and analyze the situation with them. And you know what happened, many of them got relief,
Richard: they got relief,
Cláudia: they were out of psychosis, they were able to go go back to an almost normal normal life like in any neurotic person as we all are.
So they just doing analysis, no bandication, they went out of their crisis, the psychotic crisis. We started to think, oh my
Richard: god, so Jesus Christ was was real. What he said was true. All the biblical references then were not just symbolic or metaphorical, they were true. Because Satan, Lucifer wants us to be ignorant of his existence. If we're ignorant of it he has much more much more reign to move, you know.
The new testament talks about the devil and his demons many times, Jesus calls Satan the enemy, the evil one, the prince of this world, a liar and the father of lies, a murderer, the apostle Paul calls him the god of this age. If we're going to be truly Christian to listen to what Jesus had to tell us when he came here over 2 000 years ago, we should be listening to this. And obviously
Cláudia: if you pay attention
Richard: he came this exactly for this. Otherwise he would not have to come, he would not
Cláudia: have to come here.
He came to advice that we were following the wrong the wrong orientation, the wrong god, an upside down being, and and he was all the time exercising people, chasing out demons, healing and healing and healing with mercy and believing in what they said, not denying the suffering they had, and knowing the cause. So you would ask me, Cláudia, why so why then should we need psychotherapists or why should we need science if all the the priests and pastors are are teaching this or most of them are teaching this?
And many evangelic pastors are chasing out demons in churches because this matter of demons and demonology and evil is not only a matter of a church for a religious person or religious people or a church. It's a universal problem. It's a social. All civilization is impregnated by evil. So if you go to a church and if you have like a blessing and if you are healed from a heart disease or from suffering a compulsion, if you do not understand in depth how intrincado we say in Portuguese.
Richard: Ah, yeah, sure, entangled is like...
Cláudia: It's so entangled. Evil
Richard: is so much entangled in society, in laws, in the field of also sciences, like medical
science, like technology, physics, education. Economy, maybe. Economy, all fields. So we suffer from the influence of evil, of the devil, not only through our minds, which is the most the most common source like of evil is through our minds, but not only this, all society is impregnated.
So we should get united, get together and do like a transdisciplinary
Cláudia: study and and fight the common enemy. I want to make clear that this separation between like religious people and science, medical people, psychoanalysts, is very very harmful. They fight. They say, this is not a matter for science. And scientists say, oh, this is just an illusionary thing. We will not deal with spiritual problems.
This is not our matter. It is. It's the matter of all of us.
Richard: You've been listening to Therapeutic Theology, our continuing series produced at the Keppe and Pacheco Trilogical College in São Paulo, Brazil, and featured regularly on the Stop Radio Network.
