Modern Psychology and Priest Sex Abuse

by Patrick Guinan, M.D.

The current crisis of sexual abuse by priests has shaken the self confidence of the American Catholic Church. The role of the complicity of and cover up by the bishops is significant, but the essential problem in about 90 percent of cases appears to be sexual abuse of adolescent males by priests. This is, by definition, homosexual behavior and is technically called ephebophilia. While priestly sexual abuse of this sort has always occurred, its incidence seems to have increased in the 1970s and 1980s. Why is this so?

It is the contention of this essay that there were significant changes in psychological theory as taught in Catholic Universities and practiced in seminary formation programs in the 1950s-1960s, the practical results of which became manifest only after Vatican II. It was, in essence, the acceptance of a new psychological theory that resulted in, on the part of priests, the loosening of the moral restraints on personal behavior, but especially, relative to the current crisis, on genital sexual activity.

As a paradigm of this process we will explore the work of Eugene Kennedy, who in 1972 was commissioned by, and wrote a book for, the United States Catholic bishops. The psychological theory utilized by Kennedy is representative of the model that provided the rationalization for the behavior resulting in the current problem.

The problem arose as the result of a number of factors, all of which are associated with the career of Eugene Kennedy. In order to explain both the problem and the career we need to: 1) describe the Aristotelian psychology that had traditionally characterized the Church's position, 2) outline the flawed contemporary Freudian psychology that replaced it, 3) describe, as a paradigm example, Eugene Kennedy's book Psychological Investigations,1 4) demonstrate the temporal relationship between the promulgation of this Freudian psychology and the rise in priestly sexual abuse and finally, 5) suggest a solution.

Classical Psychology

The traditional psychology that has sustained western civilization was Aristotelian in origin and was characterized as realist. A human person existed in the real world and consisted of a body and a soul, or animating principle, which conferred on that person his humanity. A human person has vegetative (nutrition and reproduction) and animal (sensation and memory) powers, or abilities. But man also has immaterial powers such as intellect and will. These rational powers in the human body constitute the soul or vitalizing principle of the human person.

The human person has certain habits or tendencies that can direct and perfect, with their development, human tendencies or passions such as for nutrition and generation. These are the virtues, and their counterparts are the vices. One of the virtues, temperance, controls among other passions, the sexual drive. Without this virtue there would be sexual anarchy and no family or civil life. An ascetical corollary of temperance is chastity or the restraint of the sexual drive for more noble purposes such as altruism or religious beliefs.

Over the course of the centuries there have been a number of challenges to Aristotelian psychology, particularly from the idealists who stated that objects and persons were not real but only reflections of ideas. The Enlightenment posed the most serious threat to classical psychology by turning its hierarchy upside down, placing appetite above reason. Positivism posed another threat, but the greatest threat came from Freudian psychology. Classical psychology was universally taught in Catholic psychology departments and seminary formation programs until the 1950s and 1960s when Freudian psychology replaced it.

Contemporary Psychology

Contemporary psychology could be said to have begun with Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920), when in 1879 he established his psycho-physiological laboratory in Leipzig. His research was to be scientific and mathematical. He observed the behavior of humans and animals, quantitated the individual observations, and formed hypotheses and theories. Wundt's psychology limited itself to the quantification of observed behavior. In a word, contemporary science and psychology are forms of a philosophical system called positivism, which only recognizes individual observed material objects. Anything immaterial or conceptual such as religious experience and chastity do not exist and are ignored. This crass form of materialism is opposed to idealism as well as realism, which says that the human mind can comprehend objects and determine their commonality or universality. A positivist denies all immaterial considerations.

Wundt's experimental psychology laboratory was enthusiastically imitated in Europe and the United States. Its influence spilled over into educational theory in the writing of Edward Thorndike and Thomas Dewey.
-Patrick Guinan, M.D.


Source:

http://www.culturewars.com/2004/ModernPsych.html