Applied Psychology and Virtue

Extract

In a recent publication a German Jesuit Father has set down some useful suggestions for the ascetic which are culled from the authoritative findings of modem experimental psychology. He shows, among other things, how psycho-analytical research can, and does, contribute much of importance in educating a stable, virtuous life; and one of the basic spiritual problems dealt with is a faulty disposition of will—a disposition with such urgent consequences as to compel immediate attention of both spiritual teacher and psychologist.

As many of the modern exponents of psychological knowledge and motive-analysis in general have called down upon themselves the condemnation of not a few moralists, Catholics have been inclined to ignore the subject as something not safely assimilable. This appears to be in response to certain authorities who opposed the Christian pursuit of virtue—maintaining it to be an oppression of man’s primitive urges, which of course is not quite the case; for it is a position of one instinct being subordinate to another, and ultimately to the Divine law. But probing as it does the inflammable part of man, experimental psychology should receive constant observation by Catholic teachers in view of the help and enlightenment it affords in self-formation.