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Speaker Mike Johnson's Wife Uses Ancient Greek "Personality Types" in Christian Counseling Service. [1]

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Date: 2023-10-30  

Yeah, I know. We shouldn’t pick on a politician’s spouse, unless it is someone like Ginny Thomas trying to overturn an election. But if you want to see two peas in a pod, check out what Business Insider has discovered about Kelly Johnson, wife of Speaker Mike Johnson. Basically, Kelly Johnson runs a so called christian counseling service which practice Hippocrates’ five personality types: Melancholy, Choleric, Sanguine, Supine, and Phlegmatic. Essentially, Kelly Johnson rejects modern psychology and psychiatry.

Kelly Johnson, the wife of the newly elected House speaker, ran a Christian counseling service that is affiliated with an organization that advocates against abortion and homosexuality and whose practices are built on the teachings of the Greek physician Hippocrates. It is not clear if Kelly Johnson will continue her practice. Not long after Rep. Mike Johnson became House speaker last week, Kelly Johnson's website became inaccessible. Johnson, her husband of more than 24 years, rose overnight from a virtually obscure House lawmaker to the position that is second in line to the presidency. The couple is deeply religious; both Kelly and Mike Johnson previously worked with religious organizations and causes the religious right advocates for. Along with her counseling, Johnson is also listed as an advisor to the Louisiana Right for Life, an anti-abortion organization. Kelly Johnson's website listed a specialty in Temperament counseling, a specialty that she received training for from an organization founded in the 1980s by a Christian couple. According to the materials the organization provides, the National Christian Counselor's Association is adamant that its offerings take place outside of more traditional state-licensed settings so that counselors and clients can be fully engaged through their faith… The temperament-based approach breaks people down into five types: Melancholy, Choleric, Sanguine, Supine, and Phlegmatic. Richard and Phyllis Arno, who established a test to identify people's temperament, founded the National Christian Counselors Association in the early 1980s. They and their advocates prefer the term temperament over personalities as the term personality is characterized as a "mask" while temperaments are "inborn" and thus inherent to each individual regardless of outside influences such as parenting. Their work is largely based on Hippocrates' view that there were four temperaments.

Sigh. I have suffered from depression for most of my life. Yes, it runs in my Dad’s side of the family, so it’s based upon biology. However, I can tell you that upbringing plays a big role in making my damn depression WORSE. My father was a physically/emotionally abusive man, and being raised in the Roman Catholic Church only added to the darkness in my life. To see this person using what some Ancient Greek came up with and applying it in modern times is just another red flag that Republicans are anti-science.

And it also reminds me of what someone else told me decades ago about so called christian schools that popped up in the 1980’s. The teachers in those schools are not only anti-science, but they were also trying to teach mathematics that came from the Bible. The reason for this is because most of the people who run the christian schools are from a chrisitan seminary school and do not know how to teach math or science!

One post for an affiliated counselor on the organization's website describes a deliverance ministry in addition to temperament testing. Using this approach to drive demons out of a client makes sure the person is "better able to receive and act upon godly counsel, including recommendations from the APS profiles." (APS profiles are the abbreviation for the couple's temperament testing system.)

Even better. Casting out demons. Sounds like someone has been watching “The Exorcist” too many times.

And does Kelly Johnson have the education and training for this service? Well, she has an education background. And frankly, you don’t need a background in psychology to use Hippocrates’ personality types to treat people either.

So why dig into this? It just is another reinforcing element for Mike Johnson’s extremist world view. The Johnson’s are true believers in a warped and reactionary view of the world. And we as a nation are going to have to confront this christian nationalism bullshit head on.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/30/2202623/-Speaker-Mike-Johnson-s-Wife-Uses-Ancient-Greek-Personality-Types-in-Christian-Counseling-Service?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

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