Modern Thomist Psychology

Extract

In a preface to a recent and up-to-date treatise on modem scientific psychology, based upon the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Viennese psychiatrist, Dr. Rudolf Allers, emphasizes the importance of such a foundation for modem psychology and maintains that no system of philosophy is better suited to this purpose than that of the Angelic Doctor. The peculiar position occupied by psychology, standing as it does between biology and philosophy proper, demands just such a basis. Man is a psycho-physical organism, composed of mind and body, spirit and matter, the ultimate nature and correlation of which cannot be discovered by experience alone. As other psychologists are beginning to realize, the detachment of empirical and experimental psychology from speculative psychology leads to uncertainty and confusion; and the failure to adopt a definite and common-sense philosophy has resulted in a number of divergent schools, each with some vague and uncertain philosophical background.