Citizens Commission on Human Rights St. Louis

Dating from rabbinic teachings circa 200 CE, the Hebrew phrase Tikkun Olam means “repair the world,” where it expressed a concern with public policy and societal change. In a wider sense it means to do something with the world that will fix damage and also improve it.

In a mystical, kabbalistic context from the sixteenth century, it refers to the separation of the holy from the material, as the spirit is trapped within the body and needs to be freed, letting the spark of the divine shine through.

It contains the idea that the world is profoundly broken and can be fixed only by ethical human behavior and activity.

The evolution of the concept includes human responsibility for fixing what is wrong with the world, emphasizing the role of human responsibility and action in the world, and includes concepts such as the performance of prescribed religious rituals, the performance of good deeds, and charity towards the less fortunate among us, generating a more just world.

When a group practices tikkun olam, setting a good example for everyone else, the world would move toward a model society.

This responsibility may be understood in religious, social or political terms and there are many different opinions about how religion, society, and politics interact to create a better world.

The trick is to express tikkun olam with humility, thoughtfulness, and justice, while eschewing arrogance, overzealousness, and injustice.

Tikkun Olam is creating meaning out of confusion and creating harmony from noise, and ultimately letting the spirit shine through each thing.

Now let’s compare this information with modern psychiatry and psychology.

The word “psychiatry”, first coined in 1808 by Johann Christian Reil, means “doctoring of the soul” – from the Greek psyche (soul, spirit) and iatros (doctor). Ironically, psychiatrists have never addressed matters of the spirit or soul, instead concentrating exclusively on the brain.

In the late 1800s when German psychologist Wilhelm Wundt established the first “experimental psychology” laboratory in Leipzig University, he officially rejected the existence of the soul and declared -— without a shred of evidence -— that man was merely a product of his genes. In his words, “If one assumes that there is nothing there to begin with but a body, a brain and a nervous system, then one must try to educate by inducing sensations in that nervous system.” In a Wundt textbook, translated into English in 1911, Wundt declared, “The…soul can no longer exist in the face of our present-day physiological knowledge… .”

In placing man as the direct and unknowing effect of an authoritarian and soulless philosophy, psychologists and psychiatrists supporting this view are promoting the idea that one’s mental health depends upon an adjustment to the world rather than its conquest. This presumes that man cannot, therefore, effect positive change on the world around him but must submit to its random will, in rather direct contradiction to the 2,000-year-tradition of Tikkun Olam that man must effect positive change on the world around him.

The inherent decency in man cannot be nurtured in a world where psychiatric doctrine and thought permeate our culture with the philosophy that we are mere animals who have no hope of finding happiness outside of a medicine cabinet.

In 1940, psychiatry openly declared its plans when British psychiatrist John Rawling Rees, a co-founder of the World Federation for Mental Health (WFMH), addressed a National Council of Mental Hygiene stating: “[S]ince the last world war we have done much to infiltrate the various social organizations throughout the country … we have made a useful attack upon a number of professions. The two easiest of them naturally are the teaching profession and the Church… .”

Another co-founder of the WFMH, Canadian psychiatrist G. Brock Chisholm, reinforced this master plan in 1945 by targeting religious values and saying, “If the race is to be freed from the crippling burden of good and evil it must be psychiatrists who take the original responsibility.” Viciously usurping age-old religious principles, psychiatrists have sanitized criminal conduct and defined sin and evil as “mental disorders” which can be “treated” with drugs, electric shock, and other debilitating regimens.

In 1946 Reverend Leslie Dixon Weatherhead of the Methodist Church in England joined with psychiatrist Percy Backus to establish psychiatric clinics as extensions of parishes and advocated electroshock, deep sleep treatment, psychosurgery, sedatives, and hypnosis as adjuncts to Christianity.

As a result of psychiatrists’ subversive plan for religion, the concepts of good and bad behavior, right and wrong conduct and personal responsibility for the world have taken such a beating that people today have few or no guidelines for checking, judging or directing their behavior. Words like ethics, morals, sin and evil have almost disappeared from everyday usage.

Until recently, it was religion that provided man with the moral and spiritual markers necessary for him to create and maintain a model civilization. Religion provides the inspiration needed for a life of higher meaning and purpose, so eloquently captured in the concept of Tikkun Olam.

The materialistic practices of psychiatry, psychology, and other related mental health disciplines are at the root of the problem. They were given virtually free rein in the molding of “modern” humanist thinking for most of the last century. Both psychiatry and psychology became the domain of “soul-less” science and the study of man was “officially” restricted to the material world – the body and the brain.

Today, psychiatrists and psychologists still claim that man is an animal to be conditioned and controlled. Governments have been persuaded of this idea and are paying public funds in the billions to those who can do the conditioning and controlling.

Psychiatry and psychology have consistently trumpeted the call that people should be salvaged from the chains of religious upbringing and moral restraint. Rather than fixing and creating a better world, they have created more war and conflict by providing psychiatric drugs for making terrorists; millions are now enslaved by nerve-damaging drugs and other barbaric treatments; millions more are illiterate due to their corruption of educational systems; violence and suicide instead of rehabilitation are the new normal in prisons; police forces are the arm of involuntary commitment; and most importantly, religion has been subjugated and shackled.

A significant portion of religion’s misplaced reliance is on the “expertise” of psychiatry and psychology for the diagnosis and handling of emotionally distraught individuals. Foremost, persons in such desperate circumstances must be provided proper and effective medical care. Medical – not psychiatric – attention, good nutrition, a healthy, safe environment — these are the sane things that Tikkun Olam recommends. Activity that promotes confidence and effective education will do far more for a troubled person than drugging, shocks, and other psychiatric atrocities.

Click here for more information and recommendations on how to fix this sorry state of affairs and make the world a better place.