Christians and the New Psychology of the Twentieth Century
The "new" or modern psychology, then, was birthed through the union of a legitimate quest for empirically validated truth with a modernist worldview that separated psychology from theology and philosophy. This modern psychology strove to have all its assertions based on empirical research alone (Toulmin & Leary, 1985). As in many disciplines, Christians in psychology had to come to terms with this new, social-intellectual context. At first it took time for the new psychology to become widely recognized as a distinct discipline. However, psychology gradually became a part of the core curriculum in the social sciences at all major colleges and universities. Christian colleges participated in this change and typically began to offer courses in psychology in the 1920s and 1930s.
For the most part it appears that Christians offered few alternatives to these larger trends. Perhaps due to Common Sense Realism, Christians involved in psychology apparently shared some of the assumptions of modernism and practiced psychology according to the new rules. Probably the most distinct group of Christians in early modern psychology in America were Catholic. The earliest notable Catholic in the field was Edward Pace, a founding member of the APA, who began teaching psychology courses at the Catholic University of America in 1891, after having studied with Wundt (Misiak & Staudt, 1954; Roback, 1952). Catholics were apparently the first identifiable Christians who sought to provide texts that supplemented the literature of empirically based psychology with religiously grounded discussions on the person or soul (e.g., Brennan, 1937; Maher, 1918; Moore, 1924, 1939), though some Catholic voices rose in protest to the new psychology (Misiak & Staudt, 1954, pp. 4-7).
This supplemental activism was likely due in part to the Thomistic revival that began in the last decades of the nineteenth century and continued throughout the first half of the twentieth. The fact that Thomas Aquinas' corpus is psychologically rich, explicitly open to empirical research (à la Aristotle) and yet requires the use of philosophy (or reason) to deal with human nature in all its fullness led Catholics to augment the field of empirical psychology with additional philosophical considerations regarding topics like the will and body-soul relations.*
*The Catholics Misiak and Staudt (1954) defend this approach, agreeing with modern disciplinary divisions and seeing psychology, philosophy, and theology as methodologically distinct, though forming a hierarchy of knowledge. On that basis they argue against a specifically Catholic (and by implication, Christian) psychology: "When psychologists confine themselves to the study of human behavior, as it can be experimentally studied, they are merely restricting their field of inquiry; they are not necessarily denying the existence of the soul" (p. 13). However, they also state that Catholics "will always endeavor to integrate psychology, philosophy, and theology" (p. 14). But since the three disciplines all seek the truth from different vantage points (theology through revelation, philosophy through reason, and psychology through observation), there will be no genuine contradiction between them.
Johnson, E., & Jones, S. (Ed.). (2000). Psychology & christianity: four views. USA: InterVarsity Press (pp. 31-32) [@ Google Books]
Is There a Catholic Psychology? (citação ampliada do ponto anterior)
The answer to this question is obviously no. There is no Catholic psychology any more than there is a Catholic biology, Catholic physics, or Catholic medicine. There is simply biology, physics, medicine, and so there is just psychology. The fact that in scientific psychology there is no discussion or mention of the soul need neither surprise us nor create any hostility toward psychology, or suspicion or condemnation of it, such as was found among so many Catholics scholars in the early history of psychology (...). When psychologists confine themselves to the study of human behavior, as it can be experimentally studied, they are merely restricting their field of inquiry; they are not necessarily denying the existence of the soul.They are simply not studying the soul. That is to say, they are making a distinction between scientific psychology and philosophical psychology, and they are electing the former as their particular specialty and realm of investigation. One does not denounce the biologist for not studying the soul when he busies himself with a study of the body's vital functions. We can quote here the Catholic pioneer of psychology in the sixteenth century, Luis Vives, who said, "Anima quid sit, nihil interest nostra scire, qualis autem, et quae eius opera, premultum" ("What the soul is, is of no concern for us; what it is like, what its manifestations are, is of very great importance").
Catholics need not be discouraged because contemporary psychologists ignore philosophical or religious issues which are important to philosophical psychology or theology. Present-day psychologists are like explorers of a new land who say to themselves: Let us forget our own different opinions about what this land is. Let us rather agree on the methods, the tools, and the language we are going to use, and let us set out to describe and chart this land as well as we can with our instruments and techniques. In joining such a group, Catholic psychologists can still retain their philosophical and religious beliefs, while collaborating with materialists or physicalists in the discovery of facts. Since Catholic psychologists are not only psychologists but also Catholics, they will always endeavor to integrate psychology, philosophy and theology (...); but this endeavor does not preclude their participation in science, even if this science assumes physicalistic methodology or is cultivated by people who do not share or care about Catholic philosophy or theology.
Misiak, H., & Staudt, V. M. (1954). Catholics in psychology: a historical survey. USA: McGraw-Hill Book Company (pp. 13-14) - obra prefaciada e extensivamente editada por Edwin G. Boring, eminente historiador, investigador e formador da psicologia científica.
Listas em construção
The Theological Origins of Modernity > Michael Allen Gillespie (2009) - http://www.amazon.com/dp/0226293467/