The following are copyrighted excerpts, all rights reserved, of Psychomoralitics: For Essential Human Well-Being (G.C. Dilsaver; in press, 2016).
The Psychomoralitic Process
Psychomoralitics brings about essential human well-being--that is, spiritual rectitude, maturation, and actualization—by diminishing essential human disorder and mal-being. The psychomoralitic process entails ego abnegation and the subsequent increase of the psyche's openness to reality. Psychomoralitic's defines ego as "the complex of pride and self-love" and psyche as "the soul's rational and volitional faculties."
Utilizing the ontological understanding of what is real, true, and good and the anthropological understanding of human spiritual nature that is found in Thomism, psychomoralitics is able to provide the crucially needed definition of essential well-being as the unfettered receiving-the-real, assenting-to-truth, and choosing-the-good. This definition affords both a reality based conceptualization of essential well-being as well as the specific goal of embracing reality/truth/good.
Achieving essential well-being, or conversely diminishing essential disorder and mal-being, involves a person’s psychomoral elements in relationship to reality and among each other. What comes into play specifically in essential being are the psychomoral elements of the psyche, the psyche's avenues of approach, the ego, and the ego's defenses and coping mechanisms. For essential well-being the psyche must be dominate for it is both the authentic self and that which encounters reality. This domination of the psyche entails allowing impacting reality to abnegate the ego. This abnegation of the ego requires that its defenses be breached by avenues of approach that allow impacting reality to pierce through the ego to the psyche. The lessening of the essential mal-being increases essential; specifically ego defensive distortions and obscurations of impacting reality (from the past, present, or future) are replaced by the broadened or new of avenues of approach to psyche.
The Psychomoral Act
The cognitive and volitional faculties are specifically that which make the human person human and constitute the elements of the fully human or psychomoral act. The inclusion of Thomistic cognitive and volitional elements of the psychomoral act safeguards against the tendency to rule out free agency or moral culpability that is common in the separate field of mental health when so called “mental disorder” is diagnosed. The processing of the real, the receptivity and assent to it and the subsequent choosing of the real and the truth as the good, involves all of a person qua person’s faculties. This processing and acting are the very human difference and constitute the psychomoral act and the dynamics of psychomoralitics. In essence the psychomoral act is simplicity itself. In essence it entails the simplistic of reasoning and choosing. After all the deliberation it is finally a binary process, 0 or 1, “yes” or “no.” For it all comes down to saying “yes” to reality which often includes a quite emphatic “no” to self. So too, it is simple because at essence it is receptive as opposed to exertive. The essential moral act is the essential ego abnegating and character transforming act as well.
The Three Spiritual Realms of the Psychomoral Act
Succinctly, the psychomoral act is the response to reality. Thus the psychomoral process takes place within the realm where being receptive to reality, assenting to truth, and choosing good is possible. As such, it is mal-being in this spiritual psychomoral realm that is the cause of mental symptomatic “disorder,” that is, superficial manifestations of less than optimal psychomoral health.
Psychomoralitics is reality based (that is, being based) both in its ontological conceptualization that hinges on being, truth, and good and in its application where a directee's relation to reality is the touchstone of spiritual intervention. Psychomoralitics integrates this ontology and intervention in the delineation of three spiritual realms of the psychomoral act. The first realm is the existential, which entails a directee's interaction with being as a receiving-the-real. This receiving-the-real is a precognitive and universal encounter with the real, or non-particularized being-as-such. The second realm is the cognitive, which entails a directee's interaction with being as an assenting-to-truth. This assenting-to-truth is a cognitive acceptance of being as truth or a specific or particularized being. The third realm is the volitional, which entails a directee's interaction with being as a choosing-the-good. This choosing-the-good is a volitional embrace of being as the good.
The Psychomoralitic Process
Psychomoralitics brings about essential human well-being--that is, spiritual rectitude, maturation, and actualization—by diminishing essential human disorder and mal-being. The psychomoralitic process entails ego abnegation and the subsequent increase of the psyche's openness to reality. Psychomoralitic's defines ego as "the complex of pride and self-love" and psyche as "the soul's rational and volitional faculties."
Utilizing the ontological understanding of what is real, true, and good and the anthropological understanding of human spiritual nature that is found in Thomism, psychomoralitics is able to provide the crucially needed definition of essential well-being as the unfettered receiving-the-real, assenting-to-truth, and choosing-the-good. This definition affords both a reality based conceptualization of essential well-being as well as the specific goal of embracing reality/truth/good.
Achieving essential well-being, or conversely diminishing essential disorder and mal-being, involves a person’s psychomoral elements in relationship to reality and among each other. What comes into play specifically in essential being are the psychomoral elements of the psyche, the psyche's avenues of approach, the ego, and the ego's defenses and coping mechanisms. For essential well-being the psyche must be dominate for it is both the authentic self and that which encounters reality. This domination of the psyche entails allowing impacting reality to abnegate the ego. This abnegation of the ego requires that its defenses be breached by avenues of approach that allow impacting reality to pierce through the ego to the psyche. The lessening of the essential mal-being increases essential; specifically ego defensive distortions and obscurations of impacting reality (from the past, present, or future) are replaced by the broadened or new of avenues of approach to psyche.
The Psychomoral Act
The cognitive and volitional faculties are specifically that which make the human person human and constitute the elements of the fully human or psychomoral act. The inclusion of Thomistic cognitive and volitional elements of the psychomoral act safeguards against the tendency to rule out free agency or moral culpability that is common in the separate field of mental health when so called “mental disorder” is diagnosed. The processing of the real, the receptivity and assent to it and the subsequent choosing of the real and the truth as the good, involves all of a person qua person’s faculties. This processing and acting are the very human difference and constitute the psychomoral act and the dynamics of psychomoralitics. In essence the psychomoral act is simplicity itself. In essence it entails the simplistic of reasoning and choosing. After all the deliberation it is finally a binary process, 0 or 1, “yes” or “no.” For it all comes down to saying “yes” to reality which often includes a quite emphatic “no” to self. So too, it is simple because at essence it is receptive as opposed to exertive. The essential moral act is the essential ego abnegating and character transforming act as well.
The Three Spiritual Realms of the Psychomoral Act
Succinctly, the psychomoral act is the response to reality. Thus the psychomoral process takes place within the realm where being receptive to reality, assenting to truth, and choosing good is possible. As such, it is mal-being in this spiritual psychomoral realm that is the cause of mental symptomatic “disorder,” that is, superficial manifestations of less than optimal psychomoral health.
Psychomoralitics is reality based (that is, being based) both in its ontological conceptualization that hinges on being, truth, and good and in its application where a directee's relation to reality is the touchstone of spiritual intervention. Psychomoralitics integrates this ontology and intervention in the delineation of three spiritual realms of the psychomoral act. The first realm is the existential, which entails a directee's interaction with being as a receiving-the-real. This receiving-the-real is a precognitive and universal encounter with the real, or non-particularized being-as-such. The second realm is the cognitive, which entails a directee's interaction with being as an assenting-to-truth. This assenting-to-truth is a cognitive acceptance of being as truth or a specific or particularized being. The third realm is the volitional, which entails a directee's interaction with being as a choosing-the-good. This choosing-the-good is a volitional embrace of being as the good.