Psychology and Catholics

It is obviously impossible in a brief article to discuss the relation between the corpus of Catholic belief, tradition, and their pastoral applications on the one hand, and the enormous mass of half-digested material which is modern psychology, on the other. I have chosen to throw out a few hints as to the kind of problems which agitate the mind of anyone who is concerned with the subject. I am dealing with two terms of a discussion which to many Catholics appear to be irreconcilable. I hope that those who keep their Blackfriars back-numbers, or can get hold of them, will re-read a long and searching article, by Father Victor White in the number for August 1945 entitled 'Psychotherapy and Ethics', for these notes are prompted largely by that essay, and the long interval of time is a measure of its vivid effect upon my thought. I will doubtless appear to have overstressed the difference between us, which is probably far more one of theory than of practice. I may thereby also give some wrong impressions by overstating the case for psychology; this is perhaps inevitable in any debate. I do however regard the reconciliation and synthesis of religion and psychology as of far greater importance than that between 'religion and science' which agitated a previous generation

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