It isn’t hard to find reasons to scoff at some of the obviously secular, materialist, and silly approaches of the broad world of psychoanalysis.  The pitiable immaturity of so many is now seen in our “therapeutic society,” which is obsessed with easing the stress and anxieties of life while blaming others for all of your problems.  Many mental health experts try to approach and understand the inner life of man without God, which is impossible.  As Philip Rieff put it, we swim in the wake caused by the “triumph of the therapeutic,” where faith is only called upon as a subservient tool of the therapeutic.  Like liberal governments that praise religion insofar as it makes good citizens (i.e. that it is useful, not that it is true), so too much mental health talks only of religion as a means of belonging and such.

In the most basic terms, cultures built on ideas like virtue helped individuals to be better by being good, whereas a therapeutic society helps you feel better by feeling good.  There’s plenty to reject.

But, it seems that many of the most astute spiritual leaders of the day are aware of the importance of mental health studies.  We might note, for example, that Jordan Peterson and Fr. Ripperger – two superstars of the YouTube ecosystem – both work and study in the realm of phycology.  Fr. Ripperger is well known for a deliverance prayer book, but his opus which comes in at a whopping 800+ pages is called “Introduction to the Science of Mental Health.”  Insights from psychology, in other words, when found to be true and helpful for spiritual maturity and healing, are an important tool.

In the ideas of “Attachment Theory,” which among Catholic scholars is considered very insightful and useful school of thought in both mental and spiritual health – especially because it integrates easily in the anthropology of St. Thomas Aquinas – we see how we develop disorders when bonds with mom or dad don’t develop.  Early attachment to our mothers reveal the world itself to be good and full of love.  Attachments to a dependable father help us meet challenges with confidence and security.  Conversely, “insecurely attached” people not only experience difficulties in relationships, but they also have difficulty accepting God as loving Father because He is either not dependable or overly scrutinizing (impossible to please).

By analogy, today we need the tools and insights of mental health because we are indeed living through a time of unraveled humanity.  The necessary and formative cohesion of community and family has disintegrated into a world of hurting, wounding, and confused individuals.  Though few recognize it, the sexual revolution has led to the collapse of a society perhaps without any historical equivalent outside of the fall of great empires like Rome.

A great lie many of us believe is that faith and virtue have been lost in society by losing an argument.  Or, things like “wokeism” stole our kids minds and hearts.  This isn’t true.  Faith has been lost as the family has been lost, and the family has been lost because the cultural ecosystem has been lost.  The family is not “a” means of human formation, it is “the” seedbed for all future formation.  For decades the family was “being lost” as contraception, divorce, and abortion dismantled it.  By now, however, families aren’t even being started as the marriage rate continues to plummet to an all-time low.  And studies continue to show that one of the greatest factors in our view of God (i.e. our belief, trust, and love of the Father) is our own experience within our families and communities.

I propose to fathers that there are two reasons you should have some acquaintance with the insights of mental health studies.  One, by analogy, we might need psychology today in the same way the early Church needed philosophy in the first couple of centuries after Christ.  That was a time when the inner life of the Jewish people was being proclaimed all over the world in the outward, evangelical orientation of the Church.  And for that kind of job, you needed all of the power of human reasoning, which the Church accepted as a gift from God to be employed for the salvation of souls.  And it worked.  Today we face the unique challenge of communicating the Gospel to a world that has self-destructed by destroying the very foundations of human development, the family and local community.  This level of breakdown requires new tools, like those learned in the study of mental health, to understand the problem and to reach solutions – or healing, rather.

The second reason fathers need to take this seriously is that they have a special ability to cause debilitating pain and wounds.  This all came up quite clearly in the research and discussion around this issue on forgiveness.  From talks at the biggest Catholic conferences to endless articles on the topic, very often when someone “needs to forgive someone that has hurt them” to mature spiritually and maintain healthy relationships, that “someone” is dad.  If you’re interested in why this is so, make sure to check out the next issue of S&S which is on the way as we speak.