Atlas›Domain XIV · Western esoteric, divinatory & new spiritual movements›Guide 118
Guide XIV-118

Escuela Científica Basilio

Eugenio Portal, Blanca Aubreton de Lambert1917Buenos Aires, Argentina
A 32 · L 45 · M 2317 interventions in the Trinity explorer
Client cardCompare
[source: …] where a claim comes from[uncertain] not confirmed in a primary source[synthesis] the writer's reconstruction

1. Introduction

Version followed: the Asociación Escuela Científica Basilio (AECB) as Argentine scholarship describes it. That means the founding period and the Peronist era as Bubello (2017) gives them, the cosmology and "spiritual liberation" practice as Ludueña (2001) gives them, and the post-1990s reformed vocabulary ("intuition", "spiritual fluid", "elevation") as Algranti and Gancedo (2015) give it. The organisation's own website and publications are cited only as these authors report them [uncertain: not verified].

What it is. The Escuela Científica Basilio is an Argentine Spiritist organisation and registered religious body. It was founded on 1 November 1917 in Buenos Aires by Eugenio Portal, a French-born notary naturalised as Argentine, with the medium Blanca Aubreton de Lambert (also spelled l'Alembert or Lambert) [source: Bubello 2017, pp. 38–39; Algranti & Gancedo 2015, p. 141]. In the school's founding account, a spirit identifying itself as Pedro Basilio Portal, Eugenio's late father, asked for a school to spread the "Idea Nueva" ("New Idea"). The name "Basilio" comes from him. The same account says Jesus materialised at the inaugural act. Scholars report these as the group's own tradition, not as verified events [source: Bubello 2017, p. 39 n. 12, p. 44; Algranti & Gancedo 2015, p. 141; Ludueña 2001, p. 69].

The school calls itself "Espiritismo Superior" ("Higher Spiritism") and a "science" with no secrets. It combines Kardecist ideas (reincarnation, communication with discarnate spirits, mediumship) with a Christian moral frame. In it, Jesus is the Maestro (Master) but not God, and "¡Jesús no es Dios!" was its public slogan [source: Bubello 2017, pp. 37–39, 44; Ludueña 2001, pp. 67, 69]. Ludueña (2009) describes it as a popular, strongly Christian reworking of classical Kardecism that spread mainly among working-class and lower-income sectors of Argentine society [source: Ludueña 2009, abstract]. Since the 1990s it has used the name "Asociación Escuela Científica Basilio – Culto a Dios – Confesión religiosa de los discípulos de Jesús". It now describes mediumship as "intuition" or the "spiritual sense" [source: Algranti & Gancedo 2015, pp. 142–143].

Core idea of change (as the school holds it). Each person is an incarnated spirit whose purpose is "reparación" (repairing past faults) and evolution toward God. In the end the spirit leaves the cycle of reincarnation. Spirits of the "Error" are mistaken spirits, not evil ones, the school stresses. They act on a person through "influencias" (influences) on thought, intuition and inclination, not through possession, and the person keeps free will. Spirits of the "Bien" (Good), including each person's "guía espiritual" (spirit guide), support the person. Change comes through moral correction, through study, and through mediumistic practices that free a person from Error influences and "harmonise" them [source: Ludueña 2001, pp. 71–76; Algranti & Gancedo 2015, pp. 143–145]. These are the school's beliefs. They are reported here, not endorsed or dismissed.

Evidence status (one line). The published research is historical and ethnographic. It records members' accounts of harmonisation and relief, not tested health outcomes, and claims of spirit influence or healing have not been tested in controlled studies [synthesis; uncertain: not verified].

For the psychotherapist. This guide does not teach Basilio practice. It gives you (a) an accurate public outline of the organisation and its practices, so you can understand a client who belongs to it, has left it, or has a family member in it, and (b) the clinical procedures for that work. The therapist never acts as medium, "vidente" (seer) or spiritual director in therapy [synthesis].

2. Framework

2a. The organisation as published and documented

  • Legal and institutional status. The school had legal personality (personería jurídica) from the start. It was entered in the national register of religious bodies in 1925 as a Spiritist association. Its legal personality was annulled from 1948 to 1950 and restored in May 1950. It was registered again with the Registro Nacional de Cultos in 1980 [source: Bubello 2017, pp. 39, 48, n. 13].
  • Leadership. The highest authority is the Director General Espiritual (DGE, Spiritual Director General). Reported holders are Eugenio Portal (to 1927), Gerónimo Podestá, Hilario Fernández (1939–1974), Mario Salvador Salierno (1974–1987) and Ernesto Guido Boeri (from 1987) [source: Bubello 2017, p. 39 and n. 13; Algranti & Gancedo 2015, pp. 142–143]. Under the current DGE, authority was centralised in the director general in the 1990s. According to Algranti and Gancedo, those changes remain contested inside the organisation [source: Algranti & Gancedo 2015, pp. 142–143].
  • Structure. A central house (sede central) in Buenos Aires and a network of branches (filiales).
    • Membership was about 400 in 1940, 3,675 in 1946 and about 21,000 around 1950, with 34 branches [source: Bubello 2017, pp. 39, 43].
    • The first branches abroad opened in Uruguay in 1947 [source: Bubello 2017, pp. 43–44].
    • Reported branch numbers: 138 in 1959, about 200 by 1967 (Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Brazil, Colombia, Paraguay, the USA and Europe) and 343 in 1997 [source: Bubello 2017, p. 39 n. 13].
    • Ludueña (2001, p. 70) gives close to 400 branches. Algranti and Gancedo (2015, p. 142) report more than 350 at the peak, followed by a long contraction after 1974.
    • In 2025 a New York branch was reported to be operating in Manhattan's East Village [source: EV Grieve 2025].
  • Health services. A medical care centre (Centro Médico Asistencial) opened in Buenos Aires in 1958, and two polyclinics opened in Buenos Aires province in 1961 with provincial health-ministry authorisation [source: Bubello 2017, p. 39 n. 13].
  • Activities. These are held in classrooms and halls at the branches [source: Algranti & Gancedo 2015, p. 143]:
    • "Culto a Dios" (Worship of God);
    • "Liberación espiritual" (Spiritual liberation);
    • lectures (conferencias);
    • study and teaching of the "Ciencia Espiritual" (Spiritual Science);
    • talks for visitors.
    Members have free access to the institution's literature [source: Ludueña 2009, abstract]. The school published a monthly bulletin (cited for 1948) and, from 1953, the magazine Espiritismo [source: Bubello 2017, pp. 44, 50].
  • Member path. Algranti and Gancedo describe a developmental path but no formal courses or grades. Through daily practice, repetition and study, a person moves from feeling "harmony" to recognising harmful influences and influences of the Good [source: Algranti & Gancedo 2015, pp. 144–145]. Ludueña distinguishes the following roles [source: Ludueña 2001, pp. 73, 75]:
    • mediums who speak, see or write ("parlante", "vidente", "escribiente");
    • seers ("videntes") and intuitive seers;
    • the DGE, who leads "videncia" (collective vision).
  • Costs. No fees, dues or donation rules are given in the sources used here [uncertain: not verified]. Ask the client directly.
  • Public history and conflict.
    • In the 1930s–1950s the Catholic Church opposed the school, and the Peronist government at first treated Spiritism as a "mal social" ("social ill"), under a 1948 resolution.
    • In 1950 the government reversed course and reopened a branch that police had closed.
    • At the school's Luna Park rally (15 October 1950), Catholic Action militants clashed with members, and Perón and Eva Perón sent a telegram of support.
    • The Catholic magazine Criterio then called the school a "secta" [source: Bubello 2017, pp. 42–50].
    • Bubello rejects "secta" as a later polemical label. He places the school in the Argentine esoteric field rather than among "popular heterodox religions" [source: Bubello 2017, p. 38].
    • An earlier sociological study called Spiritist associations, the AECB among them, "therapeutic communities" or a "secta taumatúrgica" ("thaumaturgic sect") [source: Algranti & Gancedo 2015, pp. 143–144; Bubello 2017, p. 38, citing Santamaría 1992].
  • Documented harms. Court rulings, regulator findings or independent investigations about the present-day organisation: none found in the sources consulted. No one is named as a wrongdoer.

2b. The therapist's phases of work [synthesis]

No source sets out a therapy protocol for Basilio members. The phases below are the author's clinical synthesis. No source gives session counts, so none are stated.

  1. Engagement and cultural assessment. Goals: understand the presenting problem in the client's own terms, and establish what the school means in the client's life: member, former member, visitor seeking help, or relative of a member. Use the Cultural Formulation Interview (CFI) and its supplementary module on spirituality, religion and moral traditions [uncertain: DSM-5-TR wording not verified]. Move on when you can state the client's explanatory model (for example, "influences from the Error") and the client agrees that you have understood it.
  2. Differential assessment and safety. Goals:
    • separate culturally normative experience (sensing influences, seeing in the "videncia" sense, speaking as a medium inside sanctioned practice) from psychosis, mania, dissociative disorder, OCD or complicated grief, without pathologising belief;
    • screen for risk, unmet medical need and safeguarding issues.
    Move on when the diagnostic picture is clear enough to agree goals, and any medical or psychiatric referral has been made.
  3. Shared formulation and goal work. Goals: agree a formulation that respects the client's frame and the clinical picture, then work on the client's goals, which might be distress, relationships, doubts, leaving or staying. Move on when the client meets the goals they set or reports stable change.
  4. Consolidation and ending. Goals: plan for relapse and for relationships with the community and family, and agree what follow-up the client wants.

Criteria for moving between phases are clinical judgements, not fixed rules [synthesis].

3. Guiding principles

  • Describe, don't adjudicate. Use the school's terms with a gloss (Bien/Error, influencias, guía espiritual, reparación, fluido espiritual). Practical meaning: never tell the client that spirits are or are not acting on them [source: Ludueña 2001 for the terms; synthesis for the stance].
  • Client-led meaning, with consent. Explore what membership, practice or leaving means to the client only as far as they choose. Practical meaning: ask before discussing doctrine, and let the client set the pace [synthesis].
  • Know the school's own nuance. The school says Error spirits are "mistaken", not evil, and that people keep free will under influence [source: Ludueña 2001, pp. 71–73]. Practical meaning: use this to reduce fear and passivity from within the client's own frame, for example: "In your tradition, you still choose."
  • Not a reader, medium, healer or guide. Practical meaning: never offer "videncia", interpret a spirit message as true or false, or give "fluido". Keep any personal spiritual practice entirely outside therapy [synthesis].
  • Differential assessment without pathologising. Practical meaning: judge an experience by its distress, impairment, loss of control, and fit with the client's group norms, never by its content alone [synthesis].
  • Medicine stays with medicine. The school has run its own medical centres, and visitors often come seeking health and wellbeing [source: Bubello 2017, p. 39 n. 13; Algranti & Gancedo 2015, p. 143]. Practical meaning: whenever a physical or psychiatric symptom is framed as spiritual, check that medical assessment has happened. Never advise on starting, stopping or changing medicines [synthesis].
  • Even-handed about the organisation. Polemical labels ("secta") have a political history [source: Bubello 2017, pp. 38, 48–49]. Practical meaning: assess this client's actual experience of the group, which might be supportive, controlling or mixed. Don't import a stereotype [synthesis].
  • Watch power and dependence. Authority is centralised in a Director General Espiritual and in directors who identify Error influences [source: Algranti & Gancedo 2015, pp. 143, 145]. Practical meaning: gently ask who decides what an experience means, and whether the client can disagree safely [synthesis].
  • Community, if the client wants it. Practical meaning: with written consent, a client may want to involve a branch director or a family member. Agree in advance what you will and won't discuss [synthesis].
  • Ethics. Avoid dual relationships, use self-disclosure sparingly and only for the client's benefit, and work within your spiritual and religious competence (Vieten et al. 2013 outline these competencies) [synthesis; uncertain: not verified].

4. Intervention inventory

Part A outlines the school's own practices as scholars describe them. It is here so you can recognise what a client is describing. These are spirit and energy practices, so only purpose, structure and context are given, never steps or words. Questions about how to practise belong with the school. Part B gives the therapist's clinical procedures, which are mostly synthesis.

Part A: the school's practices (public outline)

A1. Culto a Dios (Worship of God), lectures and visitor talks

  • Purpose and context. The collective worship and teaching activities at each branch. Visitor talks present the practices as self-help and wellbeing techniques that do not require adopting the cosmology [source: Algranti & Gancedo 2015, p. 143]. Members have free access to the literature [source: Ludueña 2009, abstract].
  • Outline. Talks or lectures and study of the "Ciencia Espiritual" take place in branch classrooms and halls. Spiritual fluid (A2) is given at the start and end of each activity [source: Algranti & Gancedo 2015, p. 143].
  • Example language (illustrative). "What drew you to the talks at first, and what keeps you going, or stopped you going?"
  • Watch for. Whether attendance is a source of community and structure, or of pressure. Whether the client entered through a health need (see B5).

A2. Fluido espiritual (spiritual fluid)

  • Purpose and context. The school describes it as purified particles of spirit that harmonise the "pericuerpo" (the subtle body around the physical body) and relieve "presiones espirituales" (spiritual pressures). The authors compare it to laying on of hands. It is given at the beginning and end of activities [source: Algranti & Gancedo 2015, p. 143]. Members report harmonisation, revitalisation and relief of pain [source: Algranti & Gancedo 2015, p. 144]. Evidence status: these are members' and the school's reports. Spiritual-fluid claims have not been tested in controlled studies [synthesis; uncertain: not verified].
  • Outline. Members receive it in a receptive state after "elevation" (A3). The therapist never imitates or offers it [synthesis].
  • Example language (illustrative). "When you receive the fluid, what do you notice in your body and mood, and how long does it last?"
  • Watch for. Relief from fluid being used instead of medical assessment for persistent pain or other symptoms (B5). A need to receive it ever more often to feel well (B6).

A3. Elevación espiritual (spiritual elevation)

  • Purpose and context. The central preparatory practice. A member has to "elevate" to receive fluid, and also before spirit incorporation and liberation. Algranti and Gancedo read it as a bodily discipline that trains a person to sense the Good/Error dualism in their own bodily sensations. In their account it is the entry point into the cosmology [source: Algranti & Gancedo 2015, pp. 144–145].
  • Outline only. It is a brief, relaxed, eyes-closed concentration of thought on God, with conventional hand gestures, sometimes with a request to Jesus or one's spirit guide [source: Algranti & Gancedo 2015, p. 144]. It is taught by the school; this guide gives no instructions.
  • Example language (illustrative). "When you elevate, what tells you it is going well, and what tells you an influence is present?"
  • Watch for. Bodily sensations being read as signs of harmful influence in a way that fuels anxiety, hypervigilance or panic. A client who checks their sensations for "Error" all day (B3, B4).

A4. Videncia (collective spiritual vision)

  • Purpose and context. In Ludueña's account, this is the main way spiritual knowledge is produced. The DGE describes aloud what the Good shows him, and other seers confirm it. Members who are not seers accept the content because of its source [source: Ludueña 2001, p. 75 and nn. 22–23]. Ludueña calls the method "experimental-mediúmnico": knowledge is validated through mediumistic experience and agreement among the seers [source: Ludueña 2001, pp. 74, 76–77].
  • Outline. It is led by the DGE with a group of seers. It is not something an individual does alone.
  • Example language (illustrative). "How are visions checked in your school? What happens when someone sees something different?"
  • Watch for. Private visual experiences outside sanctioned settings that the client cannot control, finds distressing, or that the community does not recognise. These need differential assessment (B3). Note also whether disagreement with authoritative visions is safe (B6).

A5. Liberación espiritual (spiritual liberation)

  • Purpose and context. Ludueña describes it as the most important practice and the one that takes up most of members' time. Spirits of the Error are "materialised" (incorporated) in mediums in the Salón de Actos Espirituales (hall for spiritual acts). A director then dialogues with them to bring them the guidance of the Good [source: Ludueña 2001, p. 76]. It requires prior elevation [source: Algranti & Gancedo 2015, p. 144]. Branch directors are said to be able to recognise when everyday troubles are caused by Error spirits [source: Algranti & Gancedo 2015, p. 145].
  • Outline only. It is a group ritual led by a director, with mediums in the role of vehicle. No words, sequence or technique are given here.
  • Example language (illustrative). "How do you feel before and after a liberation session? Is there anything about it you would rather not do?"
  • Watch for. These signs need assessment (B3):
    • dissociative experiences that continue outside sessions;
    • amnesia, or loss of control when incorporating spirits;
    • fear after sessions;
    • a client who attributes most of their own thoughts to "influences".
    Also note heavy time demands at the expense of work or family (B6).

A6. Mediumship and developing the "spiritual sense"

  • Purpose and context. In the school's account, everyone has some degree of mediumship. It connects the material and spiritual worlds through a "cord" between spirit and body [source: Ludueña 2001, p. 73]. Mediumship is speaking, seeing or writing ("parlante", "vidente", "escribiente") [source: Ludueña 2001, p. 73]. Since the 1990s the school has called it "intuición" or "sentido espiritual" [source: Algranti & Gancedo 2015, p. 142]. It develops through daily practice, repetition and study [source: Algranti & Gancedo 2015, pp. 144–145]. Ludueña reads mediumship as a Foucauldian "technology of the self" and a way of "being in the world" [source: Ludueña 2001, pp. 74–75].
  • Outline. It is developed inside the school under directors. No technique is given here.
  • Example language (illustrative). "How did you first find out you had this sense? Who helped you understand it?"
  • Watch for. The onset of new, intense experiences together with sleep loss, grandiosity, pressured speech or disorganisation (possible mania or psychosis; B3). A client pressing to develop faster than their community advises.

A7. Spirit guide and the doctrine of influences

  • Purpose and context. Each person has a guide from the Good, assigned from birth, which may be replaced during life [source: Ludueña 2001, p. 73]. Influences act on the person through "intuitions, thoughts, inclinations", and the person keeps free will [source: Ludueña 2001, pp. 72–73].
  • Example language (illustrative). "In your school's teaching you keep your free will even under influence. How does that fit what you are going through right now?"
  • Watch for. Intrusive, unwanted thoughts attributed to Error influences, with compulsive countering, which may point to OCD or scrupulosity (B4). Persecutory conviction beyond what the teaching supports (B3).

Part B: the psychotherapist's procedures [synthesis unless a source is tagged]

B1. Cultural Formulation Interview with the spirituality module

  • Purpose and when. At intake with any client who mentions the school, Spiritism, "influences" or spirit guides. It builds an explanatory model in the client's own words [synthesis; CFI content: uncertain, DSM-5-TR wording not verified].
  • Steps.
    1. Ask how the client and their family and community describe the problem.
    2. Ask about causes, including spiritual ones such as Error influences or a need for "reparación".
    3. Ask about the help they have already sought: branch activities, liberation, medical care.
    4. Ask what spiritual practice means to them, and the role of the school, a director or a guide.
    5. Ask what they expect from therapy and whether they want their faith discussed.
    6. Summarise back using their terms, glossed, and ask for correction.
  • Example language (illustrative). "Some people from your school would say this has a spiritual cause, others a medical one, others both. How do you see it? How would your director see it?"
  • Watch for. Reluctance to speak about the school (fear of judgement, or loyalty). It is working when the client corrects your summary freely and uses their own terms with you.

B2. Mapping membership, role and authority

  • Purpose and when. Early on, to understand the client's place in the organisation. It may be the central house or a branch, and the client may be a visitor, a regular member, a medium or seer, a director, or a former member. You also need to know who interprets their experience [synthesis; roles from Ludueña 2001, pp. 73–75; Algranti & Gancedo 2015, pp. 143–145].
  • Steps.
    1. Draw a simple timeline: first contact and reason, deepening involvement, current status.
    2. List weekly activities and time spent.
    3. Ask about money (donations, dues, purchases), because no fees are published in the sources used here [uncertain: not verified].
    4. Ask who decides what an experience means, and what happens if the client disagrees.
    5. Note supports both inside and outside the group.
  • Example language (illustrative). "Walk me through a usual week with the school. What do you give to it, in time, money and energy, and what do you get from it?"
  • Watch for. Benefits as well as costs: community, meaning, structure. Signs of isolation from non-members, or inability to question a director (see B6).

B3. Differential assessment without pathologising belief

  • Purpose and when. When the client reports voices, visions, incorporation, "influences", or a sudden spiritual opening.
  • Steps.
    1. Establish what is normative in the client's group: incorporation and seeing within sanctioned sessions are expected practice there [source: Ludueña 2001, pp. 73, 75–76]. Ask the client, and with consent a community member, whether the group recognises the experience as normal.
    2. Assess control. Can the client start and stop the experience, and does it stay within the setting?
    3. Assess distress, impairment, sleep, mood elevation, thought disorder, negative symptoms, substance use and medical causes.
    4. Screen for dissociative symptoms outside sessions: amnesia, depersonalisation, derealisation, switching.
    5. Screen for complicated grief where the dead are involved (B8).
    6. Assess risk (suicide, self-harm, harm to others).
    7. Refer urgently to psychiatry when psychosis or mania is likely.
    8. When distress is mainly about a religious or spiritual matter and no disorder is present, consider the ICD-10-CM code Z65.8 (other specified problems related to psychosocial circumstances), the code for DSM-5-TR's "Religious or Spiritual Problem" [source: ICD-10-CM Z65.8 (Unbound Medicine)]; DSM-5-TR wording [uncertain: not verified].
  • Example language (illustrative). "In liberation sessions these experiences have a place and an ending. What you describe at home sounds different to you. Can we look at that together, and also check sleep and health?"
  • Watch for. Content alone (spirits, guides) is not a symptom. Loss of control, spread beyond the setting, functional decline and the community's own concern are the signals. It is working when the client and you can tell sanctioned experience apart from distressing experience.

B4. Intrusive "influence" thoughts, scrupulosity and OCD

  • Purpose and when. When unwanted thoughts are attributed to Error influences and the client neutralises them repeatedly: extra elevation, seeking reassurance from directors, repeated checking of sensations.
  • Steps.
    1. Assess for OCD: intrusions, neutralising, time consumed, distress.
    2. Use the school's own teaching that influences act through thought while the person keeps free will [source: Ludueña 2001, pp. 72–73] to separate having a thought from choosing an action.
    3. If OCD is present, offer or refer for exposure and response prevention (ERP). Plan exposures with the client so that religious observance is respected. Target compulsive excess, not faith practice itself [ERP framing: uncertain, IOCDF guidance not verified].
    4. With consent, consider working with a trusted community member who can agree what is normal practice.
  • Example language (illustrative). "Your school says you keep your free will even when an influence is there. What if this thought is one you notice and let pass, without having to undo it?"
  • Watch for. Reassurance-seeking moving from you to the community and back. Avoidance of activities the client values. It is working when the time spent neutralising and the level of distress both fall.

B5. Health claims, medical care and children

  • Purpose and when. When a client or family frames a physical or psychiatric illness as spiritual, or uses fluid or liberation in place of assessment. Visitors often come seeking health and wellbeing, and the doctrine gives everyday and bodily troubles a spiritual cause [source: Algranti & Gancedo 2015, pp. 142–143]. The school has also run its own medical centres [source: Bubello 2017, p. 39 n. 13].
  • Steps.
    1. Ask whether a doctor has assessed the symptom.
    2. If not, encourage medical assessment as compatible with spiritual practice.
    3. Never advise on medicines; route those questions to the prescriber.
    4. For children, check that health, development and education needs are being met. Assess safeguarding if care is refused or delayed, and follow local child-protection procedures.
  • Example language (illustrative). "Many people use both their spiritual practice and their doctor. Would you be willing to have this checked medically too, so nothing is missed?"
  • Watch for. Delayed care for persistent or serious symptoms, and stopping prescribed treatment. It is working when medical and spiritual care sit side by side.

B6. Dependence, time, money and authority

  • Purpose and when. When involvement seems to crowd out work, family or independent judgement.
  • Steps.
    1. Use B2's map to review the balance of costs and benefits.
    2. Ask whether the client can decline an activity, question a director's reading of their troubles, or keep friends outside the group without consequences.
    3. Look for financial strain.
    4. Help the client set their own limits.
    5. Current coercive practices by the school: none found in the sources consulted. Assess the individual's experience rather than presuming any.
  • Example language (illustrative). "If you told your director you needed a month off, what do you imagine would happen?"
  • Watch for. Fear of spiritual consequences for missing practice, guilt about doubts, debt. It is working when the client makes choices freely and can say so.

B7. Doubt, leaving and religious trauma

  • Purpose and when. With a client who is questioning or has left. The school's 1990s reforms are themselves reported as contested, so ex-members may carry institutional conflict as well as personal doubt [source: Algranti & Gancedo 2015, pp. 142–143].
  • Steps.
    1. Stay neutral on whether they should stay or go.
    2. Explore losses (community, meaning, family ties) and fears (for example, of Error influences after leaving).
    3. Treat trauma symptoms with your usual evidence-based approach, adapted to the client.
    4. Help them rebuild support and an identity that keeps whatever they value.
    5. If fear of spiritual retribution persists, consider OCD or trauma frameworks (B4).
  • Example language (illustrative). "What do you miss, and what are you relieved to be without?"
  • Watch for. Grief, anger, shame, and family conflict. Watch also for your own bias toward leaving or staying.

B8. Bereavement and contact with the dead

  • Purpose and when. When a client is drawn to the school after a death, or hopes for messages from the deceased.
  • Steps.
    1. Assess the grief: course, functioning, prolonged grief symptoms.
    2. Explore the hope for contact and what it offers.
    3. Support the bereavement without endorsing or disproving contact.
    4. Watch for vulnerability to exploitation by any paid medium, inside or outside the school.
    5. Refer for specialist grief treatment if needed.
  • Example language (illustrative). "What would hearing from them mean to you? What would you most want to say?"
  • Watch for. Grief that halts at seeking contact, and money spent on readings. It is working when the client re-engages with life while keeping a bond in their own terms.

B9. Family members' concerns

  • Purpose and when. When a relative is worried about a member, or is themselves a member in a mixed-belief family.
  • Steps.
    1. Separate worry about belief from evidence of harm: health, money, isolation, children.
    2. Coach curious, non-confrontational communication.
    3. Keep the relationship open.
    4. Plan what to do if real risk appears: medical, financial or safeguarding routes.
    5. Avoid labels such as "secta", which carry polemical history [source: Bubello 2017, pp. 38, 48–49].
  • Example language (illustrative). "What exactly worries you, beyond the beliefs themselves? Let's list what you have actually seen."
  • Watch for. Escalating ultimatums, and the family's own distress.

B10. Role boundaries and community liaison

  • Purpose and when. Throughout the work.
  • Steps.
    1. Do not perform or simulate elevation, fluid, seeing or liberation, and do not interpret spirit messages.
    2. If you have a personal spiritual practice, keep it outside therapy.
    3. Disclose your own beliefs only when that serves the client.
    4. If the client wishes, and with written consent, contact a branch director or member, agreeing in advance the scope of the conversation.
    5. Get consultation when the work exceeds your competence.
  • Example language (illustrative). "I'm not a medium or a spiritual director. My role is to help with how this is affecting you. If you'd like your director involved, we can plan that together."
  • Watch for. The client asking you to confirm a spiritual reading, and drift toward a spiritual-adviser role.

5. Handling problems

The sources are historical and ethnographic and offer no clinical guidance, so everything in this section is the author's own synthesis [synthesis].

  • The client wants you to confirm a spiritual cause.
    • Response: decline the adjudicator role warmly, reflect the meaning the explanation holds for them, and agree to work on what can change.
    • Example (illustrative): "I can't tell you whether an influence is acting on you. I can help with the fear and the sleeplessness, whatever their cause."
  • The client expects you to dismiss or pathologise their faith (common where the group has a history of public hostility [source: Bubello 2017, pp. 41–50]).
    • Response: name your stance early: respect, curiosity, no agenda about membership.
    • Repair quickly if a comment lands as judgement.
  • The client is stuck: "nothing will change until the Error leaves me".
    • Response: use the school's own teaching on free will and moral effort (reparación) to restore agency [source: Ludueña 2001, pp. 72–73, 75].
    • Set small behavioural goals that the client sees as consistent with their spiritual path.
  • Non-adherence because a director advised otherwise.
    • Response: explore the advice and its reasons without pitting yourself against the director.
    • Where safety or health is at stake, be clear about your clinical concern, offer a joint conversation (B10), and document it.
  • Overwhelm after a liberation session, or new dissociative or psychotic symptoms.
    • Response: ground and stabilise; assess sleep, risk and the need for psychiatric review (B3).
    • Suggest the client discuss stepping back from intensive practice with their community, without forbidding it.
    • Arrange urgent care if needed.
  • Fear of spiritual retribution after leaving.
    • Response: validate the fear, assess for OCD or trauma (B4, B7), and build a coping plan.
    • Do not argue doctrine.
  • Medical neglect, or a child's needs unmet.
    • Response: be explicit about risk, encourage medical assessment, and follow safeguarding duties (B5). Child protection overrides confidentiality limits as your local law sets them.
  • Family conflict over membership.
    • Response: shift the focus from belief to observable concerns, and support communication (B9).
    • Do not take sides on the faith itself.
  • Rupture: the client feels you are "against the school".
    • Response: acknowledge it, ask what you said or did, correct course, and restate your neutrality.
    • Invite feedback each session for a while.
  • Your own reactions (scepticism, fascination, or your own faith commitments).
    • Response: take them to supervision. Keep personal spiritual practice and opinions out of the room.
  • The client asks for a referral to a "real medium" or healer.
    • Response: do not refer to spiritual practitioners. Explore the wish, and if relevant help the client weigh costs and the risk of exploitation (B8).

Sources

Web sources:

Cited as given in the sources above [uncertain: not verified]:

  • Santamaría (1992), as cited in Bubello (2017).

Clinical background references:

  • The Cultural Formulation Interview in DSM-5-TR (American Psychiatric Association) [uncertain: not verified].
  • ICD-10-CM Z65.8, Other specified problems related to psychosocial circumstances (includes 'Religious or spiritual problem'), https://www.unboundmedicine.com/icd/view/ICD-10-CM/945432/all/Z65_8___Other_specified_problems_related_to_psychosocial_circumstances
  • Vieten, C., et al. (2013), on spiritual and religious competencies for psychologists [uncertain: not verified].
  • IOCDF resources on scrupulosity and exposure and response prevention [uncertain: not verified].

The organisation's own current self-description, including its US website (discjesus.org), is [uncertain: not verified].

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