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Table of Contents

Foreword by Prof. Daniel N. Robinson, Philosophy Faculty Oxford University

Introduction

Chapter 1 Modern Origins and Trends of Catholic Psychology

Chapter 2 Foundations of a Catholic Clinical Psychology

Chapter 3 IDP’s Teleological and Anthropological Bases

Chapter 4 IDP’s Epistemological and Moral Bases

Chapter 5 IDP’s Catholic Existential Orientation

Chapter 6 IDP’s Tripartite Conceptualization of Mental Health

Chapter 7 IDP’s Theory of Personality

Chapter 8 IDP’s Moral Agency Schema

Chapter 9 IDP’s Mechanisms of Psychotherapy

Chapter 10 IDP’s Spiritual Elements

Appendix A Seven Principles of Imago Dei Psychotherapy

Appendix B The Psychovitiation of Catholicism

Appendix C The Clinical Need for a Catholic Psychology

Glossary

Bibliography

Index

Legal and Clinical Training Notices

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Introduction

THE NEED for the development of a Catholic clinical psychology is urgent. Not only are confessors hard pressed to find Catholic clinicians for penitents who manifest psychological needs beyond their clerical competency and responsibility, but the profession of psychology itself would profit immensely by accessing the wellsprings of truth concerning the human person that are found in the Catholic worldview. In practice, the Catholic clinical psychology herein espoused need not be overtly Catholic, for its implementation entails philosophical principles once removed from the Catholic theological truths that have facilitated their elucidation.

One would expect that, given the academic and humanistic tradition of Catholicism and the fact that the very matrix of modern science itself is the Catholic Christendom of the Middle Ages, Catholic clinical psychology would be a well-established and defined entity; however, because of historical and spiritual factors (outlined in subsequent chapters) this has not been the case. In fact, amazingly, the Imago Dei Psychotherapy (IDP) conceptualization presented in this treatise comes on the scene as the seminal school of a belated Catholic clinical psychology.

Because of this seminal nature, the foundational principles identified herein are expected to be in some way integral to any subsequent psychotherapy that is truly Catholic. Although these principles could be subject to categorization, emphasis, expression, and application in various combinations by other theoreticians, they may be nonetheless considered essential constants of a Catholic clinical psychology, being derived as they are from the Church’s theological and philosophical understanding of the human person.

The teleological, epistemological, and moral teachings of the Church in her presentation of an adequate anthropology are of utmost import for such a conceptualization. The validation of any particular Catholic qua Catholic clinical psychology, including that of IDP, will be determined by how fully it adheres to and applies the Church’s understanding of the human person. Imago Dei Psychotherapy specifically adheres to and applies the Catholic worldview in a Thomistically-based and existentially-orientated manner. IDP’s Thomistic base best assures its orthodox moorings, which provide the clinician with the objective and normative truths concerning the human person that are necessary for the restoration of mental health. Imago Dei Psychotherapy’s existential orientation, itself derived from the Thomistic philosophy of existence or being, gives primacy to the person’s transcendental yearnings as a seeker of truth and allows the clinician to enter into the subjectivity of a therapant¹ and thus appraise his mental state.

As the name implies, Imago Dei Psychotherapy seeks to restore the image of God when that image (i.e., the rational/volitional nature of the human person) is marred by mental illness and personality distortions. Imago Dei Psychotherapy conceptualizes restoring the image of God, or the regaining of mental health, as enabling a therapant to perceive, receive, reflect, and act upon the real. This Imago Dei psychotherapeutic conceptualization is based on the Thomistic principle of moral agency which holds that the fully human act entails rational assent to truth and a subsequent volitional embracing of this truth as the good.

This treatise aims at facilitating the establishment of a clinical practice that is integrally located within an orthodox Catholic worldview, taking as its end that which the Church holds out to be the good of the person: a good that is, finally, of the soul, and thus entails the sanctification of the person. At the same time, IDP recognizes that whereas the Church is concerned specifically with sanctification, and hence with the remission of sin and the transmission of grace, Catholic psychology qua psychology is concerned specifically with mental health.

The eradication of sin and the implementation of grace are outside the realm of psychology’s competency; however, the effects of sin and grace are of utmost clinical concern. Whereas the sacraments deal with the eradication of sin, psychotherapy deals with the eradication of sin’s effects, be these the residual effects of original sin (dimming of the intellect, weakening of the will, and concupiscence) or actual sin (acquired characterological flaws). So too, while the sacraments and grace can directly impact the efficacy of the therapeutic process, psychology can indirectly impact sanctification by removing obstacles that impede receptiveness to God’s grace. Indeed, psychotherapeutic change is at times necessary before a person can effectively enter into spiritual direction.

While new scientific techniques are expected to be produced by Catholic clinical psychology, nonetheless, it is not the science of psychology that is essentially distinctive in such a clinical practice, but rather the ordering and locating of that science within the Catholic worldview. When this is done, not only is the faith of the therapant facilitated or nurtured, but—and this is the driving hypothesis of this treatise—the potential of clinical psychology is actualized in a superlative manner when it avails itself of the fullness of truth concerning the person that only the Church possesses. An authentic Catholic clinical psychology, then, entails both a scientific psychology that depends on the truths of philosophical psychology and a philosophical psychology that is validated by and draws on sacred theology.

The complete propriety of such a subalternated² position of psychology to Catholicism via philosophy is a singular phenomenon, for Catholicism is singular as a religion in its thorough and correct philosophical enunciation. As such, this treatise utilizes a paradigm of integration not apparent in modern integrative literature, which has historically been developed from a Protestant point of view. The model of subalternation employed herein works best with a worldview that has a comprehensive, integral, and definitive metaphysics that is able to subsume fully and directly the science of psychology. The dearth of philosophical augmentation in the Evangelicalism from which much of the integrative efforts have arisen and the inherent lack of unified thought in the varied worldviews of Protestantism have made such a subalternation unattainable from the Protestant perspective. So too, the historic divorce in Protestantism of grace and nature, and therefore, faith and reason, makes its integration altogether different from a Catholic integration.

Because Imago Dei Psychotherapy is based directly on the philosophical truths of Catholicism/Thomism and is therefore one step removed from theology, it need not employ revealed truths in its therapy or require faith from its therapants. The nature of the human person remains the same regardless of their belief system. However, a practicing IDP clinician’s expertise and efficacy is greatly impacted by his intellectual assent and moral conformation to the Catholic worldview. The more a clinician is himself able to convert and conform to reality and to Christ (and Him crucified) the more he is able to guide therapants, who themselves must courageously engage this reality in an intensive and arduous process that requires nothing less than a “dying to self.”

Most of the founders of modern psychology had an aversion to the absolutism of the God of Revelation and subsequently to the absolutism of Catholicism. One of these founders was William James (1842–1910), the father of the psychology of religion and the darling of many Protestant integrators because of his openness to an indefinite (but definitely not Catholic) spirituality. In his seminal work Varieties of Religious Experience,

James sardonically writes, “[I]f we could descend on our subject from above like Catholic theologians, with our fixed definitions of man and man’s perfection and our positive dogmas about God, we should have an easy time of it” (Lecture XIV).

James was inadvertently prophetic. There has been, and it is expected there will continue to be, a certain ease and facility that accompanies the belated development of Catholic clinical psychology—since truth begets truth. Such has been the case with the development of Imago Dei Psychotherapy, a gift from the treasury of the Church that required relatively minimal innovation in its theoretical formulation. Finally, remarkable clinical

outcomes already promise that the implementation of a Catholic clinical psychology subalternated to Catholicism’s “fixed definitions” and “positive dogmas” will in time yield a substantial body of empirical evidence that will irrefutably witness to such a psychology’s superior therapeutic efficacy, thus adding another confirmation that these Catholic definitions and dogmas truly do descend from above.

¹ The term therapant, or a person who is receiving psychotherapy, is herein introduced to avoid the consumeristic connotation

of “client,” the passive connotation of “patient,” and the confessorial connotation of “directee.”

² In Scholasticism, the direct dependence of a lower science upon the truths of a higher science is termed subalternation. See

chapter 2, “Subalternating Psychology to Catholic Truth.”