Paul Tournier was a Swiss physician and author who had acquired a worldwide audience for his work in pastoral counselling. His ideas had a significant impact on the spiritual and psychosocial aspects of routine patient care, and he had been called the twentieth century's most famous Christian physician.
Psychotherapy and faith can be a cooperative force to steer us through a calm and serene course through life. Compassion and understanding as fruits of God's work in our hearts.
'The philosophical spirit...knows that there is no greater obstacle to the truth than the conviction that one possesses the truth'. Who can claim to explain everything ? The scientist, the doctor, the man of faith ? 'You are always trying to explain to your patients what you can't even explain to yourself. Paul Tournier speaks of the 'reverse attitude', the bold adventure of life, scientific knowledge with its limitations and room for grace to flow from soul to body. A marriage of technological competence and faith, there is no dichotomy, there is only synthesis, harmony, cause the transformation from within oneself and acceptance of self with humility, doubt, and without an iota of dogmatism. I have enjoyed his psychoanalytic interpretation of the unconscious troubles of which we are unaware. There is an openness to compassion, care for the soul of man.
This is a book I've always kept on my bookshelf to read again and again. Paul Tournier wrote another book, The Seasons of Life, which does not appear on Goodreads. Short enough to read in and hour or two, The Seasons of Life is the most profound book on life and aging I've ever read.