Ed Huntress wrote:
It's an
interesting field, but it sounds like a lot of guesswork, so far.

Unless psychology has changed drastically in recent years, it always has
been mostly guesswork. They did not make falsible studies.

Back in 1968, a CulAnthro professor told me about a study by someone in
the CulAnthro field (IIRC) comparing the effectiveness of witch doctors
and "modern psychology", with an untreated control group. The witch
doctors did some good, the "modern psychologists" did harm. I've been on
the look out for that study for some time, haven't found it on the net.

So, priests of assorted types are able to do some good, along with the
obvious harm they sometimes do.