The following is an excerpt from Imago Dei Psychotherapy: A Catholic Conceptualization.

The goal of psychomoralitics is to facilitate in the therapant the breaching of ego defenses by impacting reality so as to abnegate the ego via the creation of avenues of approach unto the psyche. This psychomoralitic process increases openness to reality and essential well-being. In entering into the psychomoralitic process, a therapant must learn to suffer-well the impacting reality of psychomoral pain both past, present, and future.

Deep suffering, even if done well, is necessarily a traumatic experience. But in the psychomoralitic process, trauma is not brought to the therapant, rather trauma is brought to light so as to no longer be buried alive and left festering within the dark recesses of the psychomoral realm. Psychomoralitics brings the therapant into the light of reality so that he is no longer afraid, stunted, and debilitated by an insidious lurking psychomoral trauma.

A therapant's receptively feeling bad in the psychomoral realm is the sine qua non of psychomoralitic progress. This is because the psychomoralitic process takes a therapant down deep; and deep down, beyond the realm of superficial coping, every person feels bad; indeed here every person feels wretched. Deep down, the human person feels wretched because of his vulnerable incarnational status; because of his basic contingent existential condition; because of the specific negative impacting reality of his life; because of his personal failings and weaknesses; and because of the presence of universal sorrows and evils. The mature person of essential well-being is in touch with and suffers-well these deep negative feelings and is receptive to the impacting reality that causes it.

But because the mature person of advanced essential well-being is widely and deeply receptive to impacting reality, he also experiences a myriad of positive feelings and is able to holistically integrate them with the negative feelings. So too, being receptive to impacting reality means a person is not resisting it, thus a fruit of this receptivity is an abiding peace. Conversely, the person whose coping mechanisms are overwhelmed and exhibits ego-reactivity feels bad but does not suffer it well, nor is he receptive to the impacting reality that causes these feelings. This ego defensive resistance to the impacting reality that causes humiliating psychomoral pain also results in a curtailment of a person's experiencing of positive impacting reality, and especially precludes fully experiencing the passions of the psyche. Finally, resistance or fighting of psychomoralitic impacting reality necessarily excludes peace.

It is feeling bad that usually causes a person to seek the help of the mental health profession, be it in the form of psychotropics or psychotherapy. Thus a person seeks psychotropics or psychotherapy to alleviate the psychomoral pain. But, paradoxically, it is the psychomoral pain that is the very antidote to the soul-deep etiology of targeted mental health symptomology. It is the proper acceptance of psychomoral pain that is the very catalyst and harbinger of innermost peace of mind, maturation, and essential well-being. No wishful thinking, nor psychotherapy, nor medication, can change reality and its painful psychomoral aspects. But psychomoralitics prescribes the transformation of these unavoidable painful aspects of existence from disabling to enabling, utilizing them as avenues to fully and harmoniously experience sorrow and joy and as catalysts for human flourishing.

Those very negative feelings caused by traumatic impacting reality, negative feelings a person has expended untold amounts of psychomoral energy trying to escape, are now, in psychomoralitics, sought as a catalyst for psychomoral tranquility. Those very feelings that have at best lurked in a debilitating manner within the deep recesses of the soul, and at worst caused habitual ego-reactivity, will now, in psychomoralitics, be a catalyst for peace and increased essential well-being. Those very feelings that were seen only as curses will now, in psychomoralitics, be seen as, and turned into, blessings.

But note well, that if the traumatic impacting reality was caused by either another person's immoral or vicious acts or one's own immoral or vicious acts, the act itself is not held as good. Rather, it is the psychomoral pain that emanates from the immoral or vicious act that is held to be good. For in the acceptance of the humiliation to the ego and sorrow to the psyche that resulted from a vicious act, the therapant is able to stop that act from festering in the psychomoral realm and free himself from its infection.

More so, the full acceptance of the humiliation and sorrow will not only undo the psychomoral harm of the act, but will bring about human flourishing, and bring it about to a superlative degree! Here, indeed, is a curse turned into a blessing. In proper maturation a person undergoes a natural, gradual, and non-clinical psychomoral progression. The end results of such a developmental maturation are similar to those of a therapant successfully undergoing intensive psychomoralitics. However in psychomoralitics, not only is the process condensed to the point of abruptness, but the results too are superlative to the point of miraculous.

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