The Soul of Psychology
Modern Mental Health Ideology vs. Christianity
Seeing Dr. Paul Vitz’s article, “Seventy Years of Psychology,” in the March/April Touchstone was a pleasant surprise. He is a luminary in the psychology and mental health fields, and although his focal point professionally for many decades has been the intersection of Christianity and psychology, I don’t recall ever seeing his writing in Touchstone before. My own training in the mid-1980s and early 1990s is in a related subfield, marriage and family therapy (my calling it a subfield would no doubt irritate those who pioneered it and those who educated me!), so my direct exposure to him and his work was comparatively minimal. In a few paragraphs, he masterfully chronicles the significant developments in the psychological world going back to the mid-twentieth century, and he concludes that there is much to be hopeful about regarding that world’s contribution to the larger world’s wellbeing, especially because more recent models of psychology give credence to the importance of spirituality as a component of human flourishing.
It thus feels a bit disrespectful, given his stature and my relative “nobody-ness,” for me to declare that I cannot come to the same sanguine point of view that he does. I do agree that the inclusion of spirituality, which began to show up about 25 years ago, has been a welcome addition to the field, giving opportunities to those of us holding Christian (and other religious) worldviews to contribute academically and clinically, and that there have been notable Christians operating within the secular profession (he mentions Everett Worthington as one example with whom I am familiar).
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Mark Odell holds a Ph.D. in Marriage and Family Therapy and has been in private practice for the last 20 years. Prior to that, he spent ten years as a faculty member in the secular academy in the field of counseling. He and his wife have three adult children and one grandchild, and attend Crossroads Church in Kalispell, Montana.
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