Kenneth Baker, SJ, the esteemed editor of the venerable Homiletic & Pastoral Review examines both Dr. Conrad Baars’ work Affirmation Psychotherapy (which is often touted as the Thomistic or Catholic Psychotherapy) and Dr. G.C. Dilsaver’s work Imago Dei Psychotherapy. In doing so Fr. Baker finds that Imago Dei Psychotherapy is "an invaluable tool" "fully in accord" with Thomistic principles, while seriously questioning the validity of Dr. Baars’ Affirmation Therapy as a Thomistic integration.
Fr. Baker writes in regards to Baars' seminal work Affirmation Therapy, “We find in the book an attempted wedding between some of the insights of psychology and the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas.… Baars claims that St. Thomas agrees with him. I have some doubts about that; there are some important distinctions that should be made about the emotions, and our author does not make them. I attribute that to the fact that he is a psychologist and not a philosopher.”*
Conversely in critiquing Dr. Dilsaver’s seminal work Imago Dei Psychotherapy, Fr. Baker proclaims that “In this treatise on clinical psychology, we find a current presentation which is fully in accord with traditional scholastic philosophy and theology. The whole Catholic worldview of man made in the image of God, a composite being of spirit and matter, is the philosophical basis of Imago Dei Psychotherapy. This is an invaluable tool for Catholic counselors, psychologists and psychiatrists whose goal it is to bring their therapants to a state of mental health which is in accord with both the natural law and divine revelation.”
In agreement with Fr. Baker is the Catholic University of America that states, "Dr. G.C. Dilsaver is rightly considered by many to be the father of Christian psychology, for his book Imago Dei Psychotherapy enunciated the foundational principles of the first fully integrated Christian psychotherapeutic conceptualization."
* Kenneth Baker, S.J. in the August/September 2008 issue of Homiletic & Pastoral Review.
(Though the essence of the book Imago Dei Psychotherapy remains pertinent, the overall conceptualization is now defunct in light of the advent of Psychomoralitics. Psychomoralitics is a new and unique discipline of essential well-being and innermost peace that is a distillation of Imago Dei Psychotherapy, purified entirely of erroneous and obfuscating elements of the mental health disciplines and fully developing that psychotherapy's Thomistic core. In short, psychomoralitics is Totally Thomistic!)
Fr. Baker writes in regards to Baars' seminal work Affirmation Therapy, “We find in the book an attempted wedding between some of the insights of psychology and the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas.… Baars claims that St. Thomas agrees with him. I have some doubts about that; there are some important distinctions that should be made about the emotions, and our author does not make them. I attribute that to the fact that he is a psychologist and not a philosopher.”*
Conversely in critiquing Dr. Dilsaver’s seminal work Imago Dei Psychotherapy, Fr. Baker proclaims that “In this treatise on clinical psychology, we find a current presentation which is fully in accord with traditional scholastic philosophy and theology. The whole Catholic worldview of man made in the image of God, a composite being of spirit and matter, is the philosophical basis of Imago Dei Psychotherapy. This is an invaluable tool for Catholic counselors, psychologists and psychiatrists whose goal it is to bring their therapants to a state of mental health which is in accord with both the natural law and divine revelation.”
In agreement with Fr. Baker is the Catholic University of America that states, "Dr. G.C. Dilsaver is rightly considered by many to be the father of Christian psychology, for his book Imago Dei Psychotherapy enunciated the foundational principles of the first fully integrated Christian psychotherapeutic conceptualization."
* Kenneth Baker, S.J. in the August/September 2008 issue of Homiletic & Pastoral Review.
(Though the essence of the book Imago Dei Psychotherapy remains pertinent, the overall conceptualization is now defunct in light of the advent of Psychomoralitics. Psychomoralitics is a new and unique discipline of essential well-being and innermost peace that is a distillation of Imago Dei Psychotherapy, purified entirely of erroneous and obfuscating elements of the mental health disciplines and fully developing that psychotherapy's Thomistic core. In short, psychomoralitics is Totally Thomistic!)