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St. Thomas Aquinas and Jung's Psychology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2024

Victor White O.P.
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Extract

Mythology is replete with stories of the childlike wisdom which dares and does where the wise and prudent of this world quail and fail. Fr. Witcutt knows the value of mythology and has learned its lesson. His Catholic Thought and Modern Psychology is no profound and learned academic treatise. It is, on the contrary, a naive book; indeed a spritely book. Neither the depths of the unconscious nor the heights of theological and philosophical speculation hold any terrors for him. From one to the other he passes—we might almost say he gambols—with enviable ease and assurance, unintimidated by any excessive concern for the’ complexities of the problem he has set himself, or any inhibiting regard for pettifogging accuracy.

It would be a great mistake to neglect his book on that account. ‘Some,’ said Aristotle, ‘require exactness in everything, while others are annoyed by it. . . for there is something about exactness which seems to some people to be mean. . . .; hence one must be trained how to take each kind of argument.’ The job Fr. Witcutt has undertaken desperately needed doing. For it is a job which the pundits neither of ‘Catholic Thought ‘nor of ‘Modern Psychology ‘have hitherto attempted to do; a job which they still seem far from being ready to do. From among the Catholics, Dalbiez, it is true, after a magnificent restatement of Freud, and a less satisfying endeavour to free Freud’s psychology from Freud’s philosophy, has attempted a dubious mutual non-intervention pact between psychoanalysis and religion. Alters has modified Adler in a direction more acceptable to Catholics; at the expense, however, of abandoning depth-psychology altogether. There has been a good deal of unprincipled eclecticism. But at co-ordination and synthesis there has hitherto been little or no attempt.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Blackfriars , Volume 25 , Issue 291 , June 1944, pp. 209 - 219
Copyright
Copyright © 1944 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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Footnotes

1

Catholic Thought and Modern Psychology, by W. P. Witcutt, LL.D. Burns, Oates, 4s. 6d.

References

2 Metaph. II.iii.

3 Cf. Aristotle, , Nic. Ethics. IIGoogle Scholar. iii, I.

4 Foreword to J. Jacobi's Psychology of C. G. Jung.

5 J. Jactrbi, op. cit. p. 59.

6 An interesting beginning lias however recently been made by E. Eiluardo Krapf, Tomas de Aquino y la Psicopatologia (Monografias de ‘Index de Neurologia y Psiquitria.’ Buenos Aires, 1943).

7 Cf. Commentarium in ‘De Anima’ (ed. Pirotta), III, 235.

8 C. G. Jung, ‘Postulates of Ailytical Psychology’ (Modern Man in search of a Soul, pp. 200 ff).

9 C. G. Jung, Two Essays in Analytical Psychology pp. 71 ff.

10 ‘The Archctypes do not consist of inherited ideas but of inherited predispositions to reaction.’ Ib. p. 139.

11 St. Thkomas's potemcies are principles of action (QQ. Disp.De Anima, i); Jung's ‘functiuns’ are ‘a form of phychic activity that remains theoretically the same under varying circumstances … a phenomenal form of libido …’ (Psychological Types, p. 547).

12 Psychobgical Types, p. 547.

13 For explicit recognition of the two judgment‐functions, see Summa Theol. I.i.6 ad 3, and numerous parallel passages. Forms of the two perception‐functions, defined and contrasted, may be suggested by De Veritate X.5. St. Thomas's account of ‘natural prophecy,’ the causation of dreams, etc., demand, in addition to mere perception of fact (Jung's ‘Sensation‐function'), perceptions conditioned by unconscious and extra‐personal factors, precisely in the manner of Jung's ‘Intuition‐function.’ That, on a still higher level, there is perception, as well as judgment, ‘per connaturditatem,’ has been convincingly argued by John of St. Thomas, O.P., in connection with the donum intellectus. Cursus Theol. in I. IIae S. Thomae, Disp. XVIII., arts. 3 and 4.

14 Nic. Ethics, I.xiii.9.

15 Metaph. I. iiGoogle Scholar.

16 Cf. Summa, 1Google Scholar. 111, I, 3, 4; 115, 4; De Ver. xii. 3Google Scholar.

17 For Jung, as has been seen, the ‘psyche’ which ‘projects’ is no more than a postulate, and one whose litmits cannot be defined nor its contents exhausted. For St. Thomas, the positive ratio either of angels or of ‘heavenly bodies’ is unattainable by the human mind in its earthly condition (cf. Summa, 1.88. 1, 2).

18 Nic. Ethics, I. xiii. 7Google Scholar.

19 J. Jocobi, op. cit., p. 125.

20 Nic. Ethics, I.x.II.

21 J. Jacobi, op. cit., p. 124.

22 Nic. Ethics, I. xiii. 7Google Scholar; VII passim. For St. Thomas's comparison between ‘restraint’ (‘continentia’) and ‘virtue’ (as god‐working and good‐making power and disposition) see especially Summa Theol. I‐II.58.3 ad 2; II‐II.145.1; 155.1., 4; III.7.2 ad 3.

23 So. at least, thought Lessing. Havelock Ellis disagrees, Psychology of Sex, P. 309.

24 Nic. Ethics, I. vi. 12Google Scholar.

25 C. G. Jung, Integration of the Personality, p. 176, cf. p. 287 on its ‘unattainability.’

26 Summa Theol. I.i.i.

27 Paper read to the Kommission für Psychotherapie of the Schweizerisrhe Gesellschaft für Psychiatric. Zürich, July 19th, 1941.

28 ‘A small mistake at the beginning is a big mistake at the end’—St, Thomas, quoting Aversoes, De Ente et Essentia, IGoogle Scholar.