Going to Therapy With John Bunyan

Readers have long recognized that Grace Abounding (first edition 1666) might suggest that John Bunyan (b. 1628 – d. 1688) suffered from mental illness. Some critics have posited that Bunyan suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder, but others argue that what may appear to be OCD symptoms in Bunyan's narrative are in fact processes of spiritual examination fostered by early modern Protestant devotion. Drawing on my own experience as an OCD sufferer, I argue that far from encouraging religious scrupulosity (a type of OCD), early modern Protestant devotional practice contains strategies that anticipate modern OCD therapy and therefore may well have helped Bunyan manage his OCD symptoms. Bunyan had access to these strategies by way of the commentary on Galatians (first edition 1535) by the German Reformation theologian Martin Luther (b. 1483 – d. 1546). Luther directs his readers to understand their spiritual anxieties and troubling thoughts as trials visited upon them by Satan, and he encourages them not to respond to these anxieties and thoughts by performing works but instead to wait faithfully upon divine aid. Similarly, in OCD therapy, patients are taught that intrusive thoughts are outside of our conscious control, and we are instructed not to respond to these thoughts by performing actions (compulsions), which only validate and intensify the anxiety, but rather to "sit with" the anxiety and wait for it to pass. Bunyan's spiritual autobiography therefore suggests that he used devotional practice to make sense of his own experience and to manage his mental and spiritual affliction.