Freud may have invented psychotherapy. Not sure about that. Some psychologists think that he could have used a little therapy himself.
Early Christian writers probed deeply into the human soul and the many emotions and drives and desires. Their language may be a little weird to the modern ear. But if you pursue their meanings without cynicism, you will learn much.
For example, try explaining how people can take a thought that seeming springs from sound Biblical advice and twist it into cynicism, hate, dissension, and the like.
The anonymous author of the medieval classic The Cloud of Unknowing translated writings from the earliest Christian sources into Middle English. Some of the essays are translated into modern English and compiled into a The Pursuit of Wisdom and Other Works.
He writes (allow for ancient words, probe for meaning) in Discernment of Spirits:
Writing about the spirit of the world–Hence it is very necessary and helpful to know his cunning tricks, and not to be ignorant of his crafty deceits. (He) will sometimes change his likeness into that of an angel of light, in order that, under the color of virtue, he may do mor mischief. However, if we pay careful attention, what he does is to sow nothing but the seed of bitterness and discord, though at its first appearance it seems ever so holy and good.
We need to discern, that is become aware, of when we or others cloak dissension, bitterness, discord, and other such thoughts under the guise of sweetness and light.
Are we sowing peace and love as taught by Jesus, or is it more like “peace and love for me, but not for thee”?
Faith Venture 
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