Page 132 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 5

A Portrait of a Christian Psychologist: Paul C. Vitz

lived with God as one lives with one’s father”; and later he recognized that rebellion against his father
implied rebellion against God; he clearly saw in his final reconciliation with his own father that he
truly appreciated the Divine Fatherhood and concluded that Christian truth is true “because my fa-
ther told me so.”

And Sigmund Freud wrote much later “psychoanalysis, which has taught us the intimate connection
between the father complex and belief in God,....daily demonstrates to us how youthful persons lose
their religious belief as soon as the authority of the father breaks down. “

Today, you are Professor and Senior Scholar at the Institute for the Psychological Sciences (IPS), Arling-
ton, Virginia. You are a co-founder of this Institute. How did this come about? What are your prime
aims?

It came about because a few of us, around 1998-2000, thought there was a serious need for an ortho-
dox Catholic program to train students for doctoral level clinical psychology. In the US the so-called
Catholic universities had bought into the secular model completely. There were however some 6 or so
solid Protestant Christian clinical psychology programs, and these served as models; moreover they
often were very helpful to us as we developed our own program. It was a lot of work getting accredited,
developing courses and finding faculty and getting students, especially at the beginning. Dr. Gladys
Sweeny was a source of much of the motivational energy from the start. Dr. William Nordling and I
have also been involved from the founding of IPS. We are also immensely grateful to the Holy Spirit
who did so much to pave the way. We got accredited to give the Master of Science degree and the
Doctor of Psychology degree in record time in spite of our religious emphasis. Most people thought
our program would never get off the ground. There were and remain serious obstacles. For example,
we are a free standing institute which means we must get our own financial support. Our present ope-
rating budget requires some $4 million a year. We have a full-time faculty of about 12 plus a staff of
at least 10 and some 80 students. At the very beginning we got some financial help from the Legion of
Christ, a Catholic religious order. Although our president Fr. Charles Sikorsky and our Chaplain are
from this order, almost all our finances come from private donors - who have been a great blessing.
Student tuition covers maybe a third of our costs. IPS
now graduates about 15-20 Masters Degree students
and 4-7 Doctor of Psychology students per year. We
were right about the great need for our program: our
students have no trouble getting jobs!

Besides expanding our program modestly, our major
plans are to offer on- line courses and webinars dealing
with a Catholic/Christian approach to psychotherapy in
general and to specific mental disorders.

We have been slowly and systematically developing a
model of the person with a clear Christian focus and Paul and Gladys Sweeney
with a rather Catholic philosophical anthropology with with Fr. Benedict Groeschel
sound psychological support. Soon we plan to offer on- at an IPS graduation ceremony
line courses to psychological professionals that count in Washington
toward a Certificate in Catholic/Christian Psychotherapy.

Finally, you link the concept of “a Transmodern Culture” to a great hope for the future. Can you give us
a brief impression of this hope?

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