In 2006, when I entered my graduate program in marriage and family therapy (MFT), I was skeptical of secular psychology, and rightly so. How could I not be when it sometimes affirmed the “goodness” of grave evils? I knew intuitively to mistrust it, but there was something more than intuition guiding me. This article outlines the principles guiding my work, not as abstract philosophical concepts, but as essential prerequisites for deep personal and relational healing.
When I started my MFT grad program, partly motivated by the upcoming need to sift the wheat from the chaff in my MFT program’s content, I was a keen student of sound Catholic philosophical and theological principles. I spent many hours reading the online version of New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia, digesting its articles on topics like epistemology, ontology, realism and truth, subject matter with which every therapist, Catholic or otherwise, should be familiar.
Of course, as almost any responsible Catholic scholar charged with the task of finding truth amidst falsity inevitably does, I relied heavily on Aquinas’ Summa Theologica. One can’t go wrong when heavily relying on St. Thomas to find greater understanding of man’s true path to happiness.
Through both my self-directed study of reliable Catholic sources and my graduate coursework toward an M.A. in Moral Theology, I eventually gained a relatively strong understanding of how most, if not all, secular psychological theories are fundamentally flawed, and how, despite this, certain elements can be reconciled with what we know to be true as Catholics. By the grace of God, I eventually learned how to practice therapy in full alignment with our shared Catholic faith.
What I want to share with you here are the things that I almost never talk about in therapy with my clients because doing so during a session would be to take time and attention away from the practical work of healing that they so dearly need. This is the first article in a short series written for students of Catholic psychology and potential or current Catholic therapy clients. In this series, I will let you in on what is “under the hood” of my therapeutic work with clients as a Catholic therapist doing specifically Catholic therapy.
By “under the hood”, I mean the foundational beliefs that shape not only my critique of secular therapy models but also my clinical choices. These core beliefs, especially regarding the nature of truth and reality, determine in part whether therapy brings about genuine healing or merely reinforces confusion. They affect everything from the way I plan treatment to how I carry myself moment to moment in session.
What Epistemology Is and What It Has to Do with Catholic Psychotherapy
Without a sound understanding of how we come to know truth, I risk building my therapeutic work on a wobbly foundation that is sure to topple. Aware that some content in my MFT program would likely conflict with Church teaching, I entered prepared with clear beliefs on truth and reality that ended up serving me well. I came to see that a psychological theory’s stance on truth and reality is often the easiest way to tell whether it is sound or fundamentally flawed.
The area of philosophy that focuses on answering basic questions on reality and truth is called epistemology and studying it proved helpful for my purposes. Epistemology is the study of our knowledge of knowledge. It attempts to answer questions such as:
- Can we know reality or truth?
- How do we grow in our knowledge of reality or truth?
- What degree of certainty can we have about our knowledge of reality or truth?
- Are there any areas of knowledge that can never be known? If so, what are they?
Because the answers to these questions are directly related to the basic claims of our faith, the “epistemological stakes” are especially high for faithful Catholic Christian therapists. For example, if we take the epistemological position that truth cannot be known, then we’d believe that we cannot know Jesus, who is the Truth (cf. Jn 14:6). What would that mean? That believers are futilely chasing an elusive shadow? If so, why not abandon our faith in the “great ‘Unknowable’” altogether then? Why not abandon our search for the truth, that is, for what is truly real, and resign in despair to live in and for the world grasping for all the pleasures that it can give us with no concern for others? The faith of a Christian is rendered impotent and essentially meaningless when he believes that truth cannot be known.
The same line of thinking holds regarding the claims of the Catholic faith. Para. 819 of the Catechism claims that Christ has entrusted the fullness of truth to the Catholic Church. If we cannot know the truth, then on what premises can the Church definitively claim to safeguard the fullness of truth? How can the Church truly know that she has been entrusted with the fullness of the truth? If no one can know truth, then para. 819 appears silly, arrogant, and pointless.
Can We Know Reality and Truth?
A good traditional Catholic position on our ability to know reality and truth lies in the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas who claimed that we can come to receive or grasp reality using our five senses. He wrote that we take in physical things through the senses and can understand universal truths about these things by using our intellect as it was created to be used. This general philosophical stance is called Moderate Realism and the specific form of it developed by Aquinas is called Thomistic Realism (cf. NewAdvent.org’s entry on Nominalism, Realism, Conceptualism).
Thomistic Realism was and still is what I usually use when answering fundamental epistemological questions because it has stood the test of time for hundreds of years since its conception without ever negating the teachings of the Church. Sts. Pope John Paul II and Teresa Benedicta of the Cross also have developed viable alternatives that greatly interest me.
As you may know, devout Catholics are on an earnest quest to know and act according to the objective truth about the most important things in life such as love, the eternal consequences of our actions, etc. But what is objective truth? I must know the answer to this question to more clearly see what is good and bad in the foundations of secular psychological models.
The objective truth is not merely what you or I think is true, but what is true unto itself. It correlates with reality. Believers in the existence and knowability of the objective truth, like myself, maintain that creation exists regardless of whether anyone acknowledges that fact. The physical world is made up of objects, of things. Truths about these objects exist even if I never discover these truths, even if I was never born. I, a subject, who also happens to be an object, do not create the truth about the world around me. However, I can try to discover the truths inherent in the world of objects around me and how these objects and truths relate to one another (cf. Summa, I:21:2). I can also reasonably expect to have a fair amount of success at discovering the truth, given the right methods and conditions.
Potential Problems of Subjectivistic Epistemologies
There are many problematic philosophies that place truth or reality in the self or the subject instead of the external world. The position that reality is subject to the authority or sole determination of the individual is generally referred to as subjective reality or subjectivism.
An epistemological stance that extremely favors subjective realities over objective reality is implicitly or explicitly at the foundation of possibly every secular model of psychology and psychotherapy. The collection of beliefs that their adherents promote is always rife with unresolvable inconsistencies and contradictions and this has much to do with the fact that their starting point or epistemology is unsupportable. When the foundation of a therapy model is problematic, then the distinctions and definitions of its other principles which are derived from the foundational ones become blurred and confounded.
One such distinction that becomes blurred in secular therapy models with an extreme subjectivistic foundation is the one between mercy and permissiveness. This brings to mind the words of Pope St. John Paul II on this important distinction:
In no passage of the Gospel message does forgiveness, or mercy as its source, mean indulgence towards evil, towards scandals, towards injury or insult. In any case, reparation for evil and scandal, compensation for injury, and satisfaction for insult are conditions for forgiveness. (Dives in Misericordia, no. 14)
To engage in permissiveness as a therapist is objectively not an act of mercy regardless of intent. I think that St. John Paul II’s point here if applied to therapists is that while therapists need to create an environment in which their clients feel safe enough to share their problems and even their sins with them, therapists must not maintain a “neutral stance” towards evil, as they have traditionally been taught to do in therapy programs across the world since the inception of such programs.
Therapy models with extreme subjectivistic foundations are inherently confused on what is and is not objectively evil. Their fundamental philosophical stance diminishes the existence, importance, and/or knowability of the objective truth on matters of faith and morals. Extreme subjectivism throws out stable moral standards and, lacking solid ground on which to base its judgments, makes understanding objective reality a mixed up and aimless endeavor. Some healing can happen amidst such confusion but, as a rule, the healing will always be lacking, and the client’s soul can be left in a questionable state.
The Application of Thomistic Realism in Psychotherapy
Thomistic realism is not a meaningless, abstract set of ideas detached from tangible reality, but a solid foundation on which a therapist can base his healing therapeutic work. Guided by Thomistic and other Catholic principles, I approach my clients with both gentleness and conviction, offering compassion, but not indifference toward sin or distortion. I don’t simply help clients feel better, I offer the emotional support needed to help them discern what’s true, even when the truth is painful or countercultural.
This way, clients won’t have to face the pain of the truth alone. Because a burden shared is a burden halved, jointly grieving the painful truth about oneself or one’s life situation brings about some healing even if nothing changes. However, such a grief process also helps the client develop greater maturity and new abilities to overcome previously insurmountable obstacles.
Where From Here?
It should be clear now that to be a competent guide, every therapist must, among other things, believe that objective truth is discoverable, seek to discover it, and have much skill, expertise and practice in discovering it and showing others how to do the same. These things are especially mandatory for those who do Catholic psychotherapy because as Catholics we believe that Jesus Christ is the Truth (Jn 14:6), that the Church has been entrusted with the fullness of the truth (CCC, para. 819), and that we are called to not only love God, but to know Him (CCC, para. 1).
While holding sound epistemological beliefs is one requirement of competent Catholic psychotherapy, it is not the only one. In my next article, I will go over some more areas of philosophy that a therapist must properly navigate enroute to developing an adequate Catholic psychological or psychotherapy model.
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