In what psychologist Dr. Ray Guarendi calls our "over-psychologized society," the role of faith in healing the human soul often is pushed to the sidelines or swept off the field.
Yet psychology and faith can work together — and work well. For many of his clients, Guarendi said, using therapeutic principles in combination with their religious practices has proven extraordinarily effective.
Still, the author of Jesus, the Master Psychologist said some of his clients have seen therapists who have been unwilling to recognize or give credibility to their religious beliefs.
"Jesus and modern psychology collide and cooperate," Guarendi said. "If Jesus is the God-man, then where modern psychology collides with Him, it had better rethink its principles. Jesus is 2,000 years ahead of what modern psychology is finally coming to think."
Understanding and healing
Dr. Kathleen Musslewhite, a psychologist and executive director of Alpha Omega Clinic with offices in Maryland and Virginia, said the psychological sciences integrate with the Catholic faith in that they are both ordered to truth.
"Psychology seeks to understand the mind and its manifestation in the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of a person in order to bring about human or natural healing," she said. "Our faith helps us to understand a broader and more nuanced anthropology of the person that includes not only the natural or human but also a supernatural understanding of the person in relation to the whole of truth which is God."
Musslewhite, who formerly taught at Divine Mercy University in Sterling, VA, believes most secular psychologists work hard to understand the truth of the person and have a heart for those who are suffering along with a desire to heal their natural suffering.
However, she said, a life not ordered to the transcendent – to something more than oneself – will not lead to joy, and it is this understanding that grounds a Catholic therapist.
"Even when we are working in secular environments, even if God is not explicitly mentioned, as a Catholic therapist, I understand that this present suffering is not without value. I understand that God is calling this person, and I understand that grace builds on their human nature," Musslewhite said. "As a therapist, I can stay more grounded and not panic and look for the quick fix. I can 'be with,' and not be overwhelmed."
When working with a patient who wants to incorporate his or her faith, she said, a Catholic therapist can look more explicitly at the person’s life in the context of eternity so that his or her present suffering is not the last word.
Tips from the angelic doctor
Father Brian Mullady, author of St. Thomas Aquinas Rescues Modern Psychology, said Catholic psychiatrist Dr. Conrad Bars discovered the value of including a person’s spiritual aspect in therapy after he became disillusioned with his patients’ lack of response to traditional methods of psychotherapy based on the work of Dr. Sigmund Freud.
After encountering the ideas of Dr. Anna Terruwe, who also was Catholic and who had focused on the healing of the whole person, he worked with her to develop a new method based on the psychology of St. Thomas Aquinas.
"[Both] believed that Freud’s clinical work was excellent and brilliant, but they thought his method of healing was flawed because it left the soul out of consideration," Fr. Mullady said.
Bars came to believe that modern psychology’s biggest problem was its failure to incorporate the spiritual dimension of man into the understanding of his emotional well-being.
Pope Pius XII spoke to this in 1953 in an address to the Fifth International Congress on Psychotherapy and Clinical Psychology when he said, "Psychology and clinical psychology must always consider man (1) as a psychic unit and totality, (2) as a structured unit in itself, (3) as a social unit and (4) as a transcendent unit, that is to say, in man’s tending towards God." He went on to say that the existence of each psychic faculty and function is explained by the end of the whole man. "What constitutes man is principally the soul, the substantial form of his nature. From it, ultimately, flows all the vital activity of man."
Acknowledging this, Musslewhite said, allows for deeper healing at all levels of the person.
"Dr. Lisa Miller, in her book The Awakened Brain, beautifully gives examples in her clinical practice where the introduction of the spiritual and transcendent has allowed for breakthroughs that were never able to be accomplished through traditional psychological/medical models," she explained.
The Catholic therapist’s role
In her own practice, Musslewhite has worked with people who have struggled with profound trauma, grief, and distress. "I am not a pastoral counselor, or moral theologian, but I am another soul on this journey home to God," she said. "Sometimes, just knowing that we are walking together towards God is what helps the person to keep walking."
When the connection to the spiritual is ignored, Musslewhite said, it can lead to therapist "burnout" as therapists who see themselves as needing to carry the burden of suffering are overwhelmed with not being able to end that suffering quickly.
"As Catholic therapists, we can work on strengthening human nature, so that grace may work," she pointed out. "We can sit in the knowledge that Christ loves this person more than we could ever love them, and that he will carry them."
Additionally, Musslewhite said, psychology tied to secular philosophies can bring a person to baseline functioning, but only a philosophy tied to the transcendent, and to meaning and purpose, can bring a person to a state of well-being or happiness. "The glory of God is a person fully alive," she said. "This abundant life is only possible when ordered to God."
At the same time, spiritually oriented practices like pastoral counseling and sacramental Confession can benefit from psychology’s ability to give insight and truth into the workings of the human person, Musslewhite said, especially in such areas as the capacities to think, listen, and learn. For example, she said, "Developmental psychology helps us to understand capacities over the life span."
In a recent talk she gave to youth ministers who were working with teens, helping them understand the differences in capacities to learn, organize, and integrate information between 10-to-13-year-olds and 16-to-18-year-olds was key to creating healthy environments for learning and fellowship.
In addition, Musslewhite said, counseling and psychology have worked on how to listen very carefully and enter into another’s experience. "I was part of a teaching cohort who worked with spiritual director trainees," she recalled. "We taught the trainees deep listening skills. These listening skills will aid them in their ability to 'be with' others in the spiritual direction context."
Reciprocal benefit
Conversely, Guarendi said, psychology can benefit from faith, in particular the teachings of Jesus, who was "the consummate psychologist."
Psychology "generally follows behind much of what Jesus said about living better," he said. "Its research is supporting many of Jesus' principles for a new life even though many seem counterintuitive."
Musslewhite added that the Church has thought about emotions from the beginning, as is reflected in the writings of many of the doctors of the Church, including St. Augustine, St. Teresa of Avila, St. John the Cross, and St. Francis de Sales, all of which recognize the value of the emotions. Confessions by St. Augustine in particular, she said, deals with the saint’s experience of his own emotional life and his understanding of how emotions can be a way to a fuller engagement with God.
Yet, she said, "Even given this deep history of engagement with the full human person, there does seem to be a devaluation of the emotional experience of the person in our age . . . A person is embodied, and emotions are part of the embodied experience."
Integrating faith with psychological science
For those who seek to foster the integration of the truth of the Catholic faith with that of the human science of psychology, Divine Mercy University in Sterling, VA, has been a pioneer.
Founded in 1999 after a group of psychologists and academicians identified the need for an institution of higher learning that could bring psychology into harmony with the Catholic-Christian vision of the human person, marriage, and the family, the school began as the Institute for the Psychological Sciences. Initially, it trained already-practicing Catholic therapists, but by 2001, the institute’s first master’s degree students had graduated and were on their way to licensure as therapists. The first doctoral graduates followed in 2005.
In 2015, the institute changed its name to Divine Mercy University. In the last five years, enrollment has grown from 311 to 658 and alumni from 258 to 790.
Today, the school offers a doctorate in clinical psychology and master of science degrees in counseling and psychology in addition to an online spiritual direction certificate program for clergy and laypeople. Divine Mercy is also a participant in the Legatus Scholarship Benefit program.