Welcome to the Call to Flourish podcast.
I'm Thomas Kronquist, your cohost, again with father Charles Sikorsky, the president of Divine Mercy University.
Father, how are you today?
I'm doing fine, Tom.
Thank you very much.
I'm really looking forward to today's conversation.
We're gonna talk a little bit about psychology and faith and religion and why why those two, can really fit together well and why it's so important, I think, for, for our world today.
So Doctor Vitz is our guest speaker again.
And, if, if people have listened to his first, two podcasts, they were very, very interesting, the topic of fatherhood and forgiveness.
And and now we're gonna hear a little bit about his personal journey and how he came to appreciate the the relationship between psychology and faith.
If anybody missed it, doctor Vitz is a senior scholar of psychology here at the Institute for Psychological Sciences, which is our school of psychology at Divine Mercy University.
He's also professor emeritus at New York University.
He has written many books and articles.
Most notably, he's the co author of the recently published textbook, A Catholic Christian Meta Model of the Person, which has already won a prestigious expanded reason award given by the Vatican Foundation, Joseph Ratzinger, Benedict the sixteenth, and University of Francisco de Vittoria in Spain.
Doctor Vitts, how are you today?
I'm fine.
Thank you.
I'm enjoying the fall weather and, You're up in New York there today, aren't you?
Yes.
I'm in actually, the color is at just about at peak, and it's really gorgeous.
I will catch up with you here in Virginia in a few weeks.
Right.
Yeah.
So that's great.
Well, question, you know, doctor Vitz, I think your first book was called psychology as religion.
And, you know, there seems to be traditionally, there seem to be in some people's minds like a separation of the two.
And you talked about that in the book that that on one hand, we have the science of psychology.
Other hand, religion is as if they're not compatible.
And so I guess my my first question would just if you tell us a little bit about what what motivated you to write that book and what got you interested in the, in the topic?
Alright.
Well, it's complicated, and I'll try to just hit certain simple highlights that I hope will be informative.
I had converted from atheism, in the early seventies.
I was an experimental psychologist with an atheist background.
And in converting, which I won't go into, but I did convert.
And first, it was sort of a, an Anglo Catholic Episcopalian and then became a Catholic.
But in that conversion, one of the things I discovered was that I had been I thought I was well educated.
I had a PhD, etcetera, etcetera.
But I had never been, in fact, exposed to the intellectual tradition of Christianity.
I'd never even heard of CS Lewis or GK Chesterton, much less many of the other people that had been part of the tradition of the intellectual tradition of the church.
And when I when I discovered it, I felt all of a sudden, I felt like a kid in a candy store.
I felt like nobody had you know, I felt, hey.
This is the richest intellectual material I've ever seen in my life, and it's relevant to and it's been ignored by the secular world.
My gosh.
Look what's here.
It's it's terrific.
And, and then I was sort of afraid that maybe all that I was gonna do as I became a Christian was become another one of you know, be equally intellectual and all of that and sort of like I was in my secular world.
So I knew that would be something to worry about.
But at first I noticed the contrast between psychology and religion And in my book Psychology as Religion, the Cult of Self Worship, I criticized the the humanistic and above all, Rogerian and Maslovian psychology of the time who criticized it very, strongly from a Christian perspective.
In other words, secular psychology was about the self.
It was about aggrandizing the self.
It's about self realization, self actualization.
It's all about you, number one, not about other people and, of course, not about God.
And so I criticized it, and it actually, began my intellectual trajectory.
But then as time went on and I discovered the riches the riches of the church tradition, I saw that the church, that Christianity had a lot to bring to the understanding of the person.
That psychology was not just the only discipline that could tell you about people, that the church had an understanding of the person that was very rich, that was and very, potentially applicable.
Now at this time, I was at NYU.
I was in a very secular environment.
I couldn't work on this very much.
I could read about it.
I wrote a few articles and essays and so on, but I couldn't really mine it.
I couldn't really deal with it in a systematic way because I had obligations to, New York University, to its department.
I had an absence of students who were interested in it, you might say as well.
And and so I I it just grew as a desire to find some way in order to express what I thought was there embedded in the Christian tradition of the person and find a way to apply it to psychology.
Well, then some years later, and this is, you know, now we're hitting about 1995 or 1998.
I I went oh, 1990, I was down at the John Paul the second Institute for Marriage and Family where I gave a course, and I began to sense some more of the richness of the the relevance of church writers for understanding the person.
And then around the in 1999, we set up, Gladys Sweeney and, Bill Nordling and I set up.
We're the first three involved in the setting up of, IPS.
The first three psychologists, that is.
We had help from, priests and others too, of course, and donors and benefactors.
But and that here, finally, I could really study how to integrate, and bring this rich tradition of of the intellectual life of the church to to rounding out and fulfilling the understanding of the person.
And that's what we've been doing here at DMU actively for the last twenty years.
So doctor Vitz, you know, you were trained at Stanford University and then for many, many years taught at New York University, NYU, two of the most elite schools in the country.
So your your credentials, regarding psychology and the modern version of it are very, are impeccable, really, when you look at it that way.
What were you talked about in your book.
You you criticized, the shortcomings of this humanistic approach.
What were the strengths there?
Were there what were the good things that you did find, in in that were out there in modern psychology?
Well, even the humanistic psychologists, which I I saw focused on the isolated individual and being very narcissistic, Nevertheless, they had brought psychology out of the extremely narrow, behaviorist position and out of the relatively narrow psychoanalytic position as well.
So they had brought it into a more reasonable understanding of the person.
But the person now was still only the isolated individual, and that's what I criticized this narcissistic aspect.
But much to my surprise, and not because of my criticism, but psychologists themselves began to, discover very important aspects of the person that had been neglected that I had pointed out, but they discovered them on their own.
And interpersonal relations began to be seen as very important.
Love between people, bonding, attachment.
And so with people like Bowlby and the attachment theory, all of a sudden, we saw that people are really created out of their relationships with other people.
They're not sort of self generated from inside.
They're created in our relationships.
That's how we come into existence as a person.
We are there as two people before I am even there as an isolated individual.
And so psychology began to see that, and that was a very important contribution that psychology developed, the interpersonal aspect.
And a number of prominent psychologists are well known for introducing interpersonal aspects into psychotherapy.
And in addition, they brought in a much bigger emphasis on emotion than had been present previously.
Motion focused therapy has come along, and that's a major contribution.
In addition, they the psychologists brought in the cognitive and behavioral approach.
All of a sudden, how we thought our thinking was seen as an important contributor to our pathology, and changing how to think in a better way was part of recovery.
That came out of psychology on its own, but not it wasn't there in any strong sense when I wrote my critique.
So those were all positive developments that occurred in psychology in the last, say, fifty years.
And then finally, two other big things have happened to psychology that have helped it.
One, around, the year 2000 or a little earlier, forgiveness was brought into psychology.
It was officially acknowledged by the American Psychological Association that forgiveness was a helpful relationship between people, that forgiveness could be an intervention in psychotherapy, and would help people.
And, well, you know, we've we've all known that forgiveness is one of the ways in which relationships between people are healed, but finally psychology has acknowledged it too.
And that's very important.
And then the last positive thing that psychology has brought in is that psychology has not discovered but rediscovered.
Or anyway psychology has discovered the virtues.
And my Dominican friends, when I would say psychology has discovered the virtues, they would all laugh and say well you know since Aristotle two thousand five hundred years ago it took you a long time.
And I say yeah that's true.
The virtues were discovered a long time ago by Aristotle and then by Aquinas and many others.
But you know what?
You don't know how to apply them.
We don't psychologists are going to learn about how you can learn them or if you can learn them or when you can learn them or how and whatever.
And psychology is gonna make a big contri contribution.
So they got a little quieter then in their criticism.
Okay.
Well But that was developed by a a secular Jewish psychologist, primarily by Martin Seligman and many others now have made major contributions.
And so psychology has discovered the virtues, and the virtues are now seen as as guideposts to human flourishing.
Psychology has turned from looking at just our problems and our pathologies to how do we flourish, how do we go forward now in a positive way.
And that's what the virtues have brought in.
They've brought in the purpose of life when previously, it was only the determinants of our of our pathologies.
Okay.
Well, I'm not a Dominican, but I'm gonna start talking again here.
You know, it's interesting.
There's different ways we could get to the truth.
Right?
Sometimes we got we have God's revelation, which kinda tells us what the truth is, but seems like maybe this the the profession of the discipline of psychology is doing sort of a trial and error, and you're starting to discover more and more, maybe getting to the same truth that we know through the faith and through what's been passed down to us.
And one of the things that you brought up, they're talking about the importance of relationships and going from this individualistic Paradigm to a more understanding better now the centrality of relationships and one of the things we have in our book the catholic christian meta model of the person one of the critical things we talk about it.
There's a human beings are relational and Kind of we know that through our families and all of our relationships But probably the perfect relationship is is God the holy trinity God himself is a really it's father son and holy spirit all in one And and I think that the ultimate foundation of that so, so with with the book we have, the Catholic Christian made a model of the person and you and the faculty worked so hard on over the years.
Could that be something that could actually help be a guide?
How for a lot of the these good these positive advances, in psychology, how do you see that as maybe even improving these, these good things that are out there in this in in the secular world, and and how do you see that relationship working?
And why and why would it be important to to know about the CCMMP, which we call it?
Okay.
Well, that's a big, a big question to answer, but I I'll I'll I'll try.
First of all, for for Christians, it means that because we're made in the image of God and God is an interpersonal triune God, We are made for interpersonal relationships.
Now even if you're not a Christian, the old testament is very clear that we're made the purpose of life is to love God and love others.
And so what the model points out is the importance of love.
And if if even for those who are in other real I mean, Jews can see that perfectly, you know.
After all, that was you know?
They got it first and and and and and and very clearly.
And, so loving God and loving others is now seen as the ultimate goal in life life.
And not and not just self fulfillment, not just that, but we've learned now that the virtues are there, and the virtues are things that have a lot to do with other people.
The virtue of justice is how we treat other people.
The virtue of courage is how we deal with the social environment as well as the physical environment.
The virtue of wisdom, the virtue of of self control, all of these have to do with our relationships with others.
And as we start moving there into the these purposes for life and psychology is now helping, and I I hope even the world of education will catch up with that pretty quickly on the virtual business.
In any case, that's moving us towards something that is basically interpersonal and aimed at positive relationships that relate positive relationships with people in our society is now seen as one of the goals of flourishing.
And of course, we would like to see it finally end in the love of God and love of neighbor.
And, but those who, you know, that's that's maybe restricted to certain kind to religious people or who knows.
But even the nonreligious, I think, will see in loving others, they flourish and reach peace and happiness and joyfulness.
Quick question.
You're talking about the virtues.
What about the theological virtues?
Seems like you're talking about the human virtues, primarily.
The theological virtues, you certainly talked about charity, but what about faith and hope?
How does psychology understand faith and hope?
Well, I think they call hope optimism, and they see it that way.
And faith, I think they might call it, certain kinds of trust, in another person and so on.
They don't really talk about faith in the usual sense.
That's more that's truly theological, I think, at its core.
But, maybe I've missed something there, so I'm I if I'm to be corrected, so be it.
Maybe in time.
Maybe in time, though, Rick.
Maybe in time.
But, I think they even are beginning to see hope as being hope is related to having a a positive notion toward your life as flourishing.
I think, for example, it's not just optimism, but hope.
Every person who goes into psychotherapy has some hope, not just optimism, some hope that this is gonna help them to a better life.
And therefore, hope is kind of a foundation in therapy.
If you don't have it, why in the world would you go into therapy and spend time and money and be more hopeful about what it was gonna be for your future life?
Also, you know, there's this this search for transcendence or meaning, something outside of yourself.
And so maybe that in a way could be relate related to something we call vocation.
Right?
The idea that we've been put here for a purpose, that god has made us for a reason.
He has a or we have a we have a role to play in this world.
You know, is it the the psychology try to to go there, more of these days or or not?
For for They do in some ways.
They do accept something called spirituality Okay.
Which is a rather undefined term in many ways.
It's a little bit vague.
But it allows the notion that there is a certain purpose in life that's higher and transcendent.
Mhmm.
And, I think psychology has by choosing to accept the virtues, has moved toward has made a major change, as I've said, from determinism to telos.
And once you start that movement, it's move it's headed toward an understanding of the transcendent.
And at some point, the transcendent then becomes seen as the ultimate end of flourishing.
You know, and it reminds me as you say that of Saint Paul's address to the Greeks, the Decapolis, when he's talking about this this un unseen God, and he's trying to reveal it to them.
Yeah.
I think it's a it's an interesting narrative to kinda to look at the secular world in general, but also this this this development in psychology as little by little, the stuff that's inside of us and really comes from our nature.
We can't we can't run from it.
And and so these these bigger questions, I don't think peep you can't avoid it one way or the other whether you're overtly a religious person or not.
And I think that's one of the the things that we try to do here in our programs, and I think it's one of the things that the the CCMMP is trying to address is that, yeah, there is there is there's a common human nature that that has these these characteristics that, that are just just part of human nature.
It's part of human nature, but right now, a lot of it has been what they call imminentized.
It's been put into this world.
There's some people who believe that politics is the whole meaning of life.
Other people believe self individualization is.
And there are some people I know, fair number of them, with money.
Everything's about money.
Right.
The culture, I hope, will discover their their inadequacies.
Not that they don't have positive aspects, but, you know, they're not the ultimate.
A psychologist once told me that the the purpose the task of psychology is to bring people to the doorstep of faith.
Would you, would you see any, truth in that, merit in that?
I do see there's merit in that.
I would say, the patron saint of psychology should be, Saint John the Baptist.
Mhmm.
And therefore, that would be the bringing there to the to the edge.
And at the same time, psychology must decrease and spirituality must and God must increase.
Wow.
Sounds like a book title.
Who knows?
I doubt it, but somebody might use it.
That's a great way to end it.
I was gonna ask if but that that's great.
Yeah.
So we have we have the Herald out in the wilderness, right, calling for us to the the voice out there, the precursor, I guess, to Christ in John the Baptist.
And Psychology can end up becoming, the the Herald, the precursor.
One of the things in the Catholic teaching that's very consistent with that is your grace builds on nature.
And, that's, in other words, god says chosen through the incarnation, and there's something about our nature that is good and that's here, and it we we need to have a solid, nature so that God can do fully, completely, or or more completely his work within us.
And so Yeah.
Psychology helps us to heal.
It helps us to better understand, you know, to develop virtues and things which give God a better opportunity to work within us.
And I think that's very exciting for, for that.
And also can you might also say it can help us take away barriers that prevent us from loving as we should.
Doctor Vitts, thank you again for, being our guest on the Cult Flourish podcast.
If anybody wants more information about Divine Mercy University and this podcast, they can go to our website, divinemercy.edu, and click on the podcast web page.
And you could also look at episodes on YouTube.
You can download them from iTunes, Spotify, and Google Podcasts.
So, father, any last words before we end?
Well, I'll just thank you, doctor Bitts.
It was a very fascinating discussion, and we're really, grateful for your time and, really for your witness out there.
Joining with John the Baptist to kinda be a precursor for the field.
Are you wearing a hair shirt and eating, locusts, Paul?
No.
I am I I am not worthy of them at all.
I am not worthy of him.
I'm wearing a tie and a jacket.
I wish you the best, and, enjoy your time up in New York, and we look forward to seeing you back here soon.
Very good.
I'll be back shortly.
God bless.