What is "hagiotherapy"

n. The medieval practice of using religious relics, prayers, pilgrimages, etc. in an attempt to alleviate sickness.

Hagiotherapy is the medieval practice of using religious relics, prayers, pilgrimages etc. to alleviate sickness. It was used to treat epilepsy during the Middle Ages with Saint Valentine particularly associated with the treatment as an 'epilepsy specialist'.

"Hagiotherapy" was revived under the influence by pope John Paul II's encyclica Salvifici doloris as a pseudo-therapeutic method of healing a man's "spiritual soul" on the premise of "religious experience". A known practicing therapist is Tomislav Ivančić, who founded Center for Spiritual Help in Zagreb. Prokop Remeš in the Czech Republic is treating addicts in Bohnice Psychiatric Hospital in Prague. His style of hagiotherapy isn't founded on the "Salvifici doloris" encyclical, it is a type of group existential psychotherapy (Yalom, Frankl), which focuses on eliminating dysfunctional behaviour patterns from one's life. This hagiotherapy uses biblical text as background to project one's own experiences against to active a greater understanding of text: one of the main instruments of hagiotherapy is projective work with biblical texts.