Paul Vitz | |
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| Born | Paul Clayton Vitz August 27, 1935 |
| Spouse | Evelyn ("Timmie") Birge Vitz |
| Children | Rebecca (Vitz) Cherico, Jessica (Vitz) McGibbon, Fr. Daniel Vitz IVE, Peter T. Vitz, Michael G. Vitz, Anna (Vitz) Price |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Cognitive Psychology |
| Sub-discipline | Psychology and Religion,Psychology and Art |
| Institutions | New York University |
| Notable ideas | Selfism |
Paul Clayton Vitz (born August 27,1935) is an American psychologist who is a Senior Scholar at Divine Mercy University in Sterling,Virginia. He is emeritus professor of psychology at New York University. His work focuses primarily on the relationship between psychology and Christianity.
Paul Vitz was born on August 27,1935,in Toledo,Ohio. He moved to Minneapolis,and later to Cincinnati,Ohio,which he considers his hometown. He was raised as a nominal Presbyterian. [1] He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a BA in psychology from the University of Michigan in 1957 and with a PhD in psychology from Stanford University in 1962.
From 1962 to 1964,Vitz taught at Pomona College. He held a post-doc at Stanford University,from 1964 to 1965. He was hired in the fall of 1965 as assistant professor in the psychology department of New York University. He received tenure there in the fall of 1972. His research was focused on perceptual and cognitive psychology,especially sequential pattern learning and visual form perception and preferred levels of stimulus complexity. Vitz also has an ongoing interest in psychology and art as shown in a co-authored work:"Modern Art and Modern Science:The Parallel Analysis of Vision",1984. His interest in visual art has also focused on the two brain hemispheres and on a hierarchical model of image construction in visual perception. [2]
His career changed markedly in the mid-seventies with his conversion from atheism to Christianity and later,in 1979,to Catholicism. His first book,"Psychology as Religion:The Cult of Self-Worship",1977 (2nd ed.,1994),critiqued humanistic psychology (e.g. Rogers,Maslow) for its radical individualism,neglect of interpersonal relationships,and its assumption that self-actualization was the meaning of life for everyone. In the early 1980s Vitz was involved in the national controversy over neglect of religion,especially Christianity in public school textbooks. He authored "Censorship:Evidence of bias in our children's textbooks",1984. During this decade he also wrote articles on Christian approaches to the work of Sigmund Freud,resulting in his book "Sigmund Freud's Christian Unconscious",1988. This book provides much historical and biographical evidence for Freud's deep and lifelong involvement with and ambivalence toward Christianity,especially Catholicism. It also shows that the significance of this concern with Christianity has been widely neglected and ignored by his biographers. Another interest of his at this time was moral development involving a critique of rational/cognitive approaches,e.g. Kohlberg,and an emphasis on stories. See "The use of stories in moral development:New psychological reasons for an old education method",Amer. Psychologist,1990. In the 1980s and especially in the 90's his work turned to personality theory and Christianity and to the psychological importance of fathers. The latter culminated in a book on what Vitz claims are the psychological factors which produce atheism,"Faith of the Fatherless:The Psychology of Atheism",1999 and a 2nd ed. in 2013. He has made basic contributions as an editor to "A Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person",2020 and to "The Complementarity of Women and Men",2021. He is presently working on the origin of human consciousness,the relevance of the soul for psychology,and on the consequences of analog and digital coding.
At New York University he was promoted to full Professor and he retired from there in 2003 as Professor Emeritus. He is now Senior Scholar/Professor in the Institute for the Psychological Sciences,Divine Mercy University. [3]
Vitz is married to Evelyn Birge Vitz,a Professor of French at New York University specializing in medieval studies and in the performance of medieval and other narrative works. They had six children and now twenty-three grandchildren.
Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies seen as originating from conflicts in the psyche, through dialogue between patient and psychoanalyst, and the distinctive theory of mind and human agency derived from it.
Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology.
The unconscious mind consists of processes in the mind that occur automatically and are not available to introspection. Although these processes exist beneath the surface of conscious awareness, they are thought to exert an effect on conscious thought processes and behavior. Empirical evidence suggests that unconscious phenomena include repressed feelings and desires, memories, automatic skills, subliminal perceptions, and automatic reactions. The term was coined by the 18th-century German Romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
In psychoanalytic theory, the id, ego and super-ego are three distinct, interacting agents in the psychic apparatus, defined in Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche. The three agents are theoretical constructs that Freud employed to describe the basic structure of mental life as it was encountered in psychoanalytic practice. Freud himself used the German terms das Es, Ich, and Über-Ich, which literally translate as "the it", "I", and "over-I". The Latin terms id, ego and super-ego were chosen by his original translators and have remained in use.
Psychoanalytic theory is the theory of personality organization and the dynamics of personality development relating to the practice of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology. First laid out by Sigmund Freud in the late 19th century, psychoanalytic theory has undergone many refinements since his work. The psychoanalytic theory came to full prominence in the last third of the twentieth century as part of the flow of critical discourse regarding psychological treatments after the 1960s, long after Freud's death in 1939. Freud had ceased his analysis of the brain and his physiological studies and shifted his focus to the study of the psyche, and on treatment using free association and the phenomena of transference. His study emphasized the recognition of childhood events that could influence the mental functioning of adults. His examination of the genetic and then the developmental aspects gave the psychoanalytic theory its characteristics. Starting with his publication of The Interpretation of Dreams in 1899, his theories began to gain prominence.
Analytical psychology is a term coined by Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, to describe research into his new "empirical science" of the psyche. It was designed to distinguish it from Freud's psychoanalytic theories as their seven-year collaboration on psychoanalysis was drawing to an end between 1912 and 1913. The evolution of his science is contained in his monumental opus, the Collected Works, written over sixty years of his lifetime.
Repression is a key concept of psychoanalysis, where it is understood as a defense mechanism that "ensures that what is unacceptable to the conscious mind, and would if recalled arouse anxiety, is prevented from entering into it." According to psychoanalytic theory, repression plays a major role in many mental illnesses, and in the psyche of the average person.
Pierre Marie Félix Janet was a pioneering French psychologist, physician, philosopher, and psychotherapist in the field of dissociation and traumatic memory.
Theodor Lipps was a German philosopher, famed for his theory regarding aesthetics, creating the framework for the concept of Einfühlung (empathy), defined as, "projecting oneself onto the object of perception." This has then led onto opening up a new branch of interdisciplinary research in the overlap between psychology and philosophy.
Moses and Monotheism is a 1939 book about the origins of monotheism written by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. It is Freud's final original work and it was completed in the summer of 1939 when Freud was, effectively speaking, already "writing from his death-bed." It appeared in English translation the same year.
Psychodynamics, also known as psychodynamic psychology, in its broadest sense, is an approach to psychology that emphasizes systematic study of the psychological forces underlying human behavior, feelings, and emotions and how they might relate to early experience. It is especially interested in the dynamic relations between conscious motivation and unconscious motivation.
Christian counseling is distinct from secular counseling. According to the International Association of Biblical Counselors, Biblical counseling "seeks to carefully discover those areas in which a Christian may be disobedient to the principles and commands of Scripture and to help him learn how to lovingly submit to God's will." Christian counselors, therefore, approach psychology through the lens of the Bible. They see the Bible as the source of all truth.
The Jungian interpretation of religion, pioneered by Carl Jung and advanced by his followers, is an attempt to interpret religion in the light of Jungian psychology. Unlike Sigmund Freud and his followers, Jungians tend to treat religious beliefs and behaviors in a positive light, while offering psychological referents to traditional religious terms such as "soul", "evil", "transcendence", "the sacred", and "God". Because beliefs do not have to be facts in order for people to hold them, the Jungian interpretation of religion has been, and continues to be, of interest to psychologists and theists.
In psychoanalysis, preconscious is the loci preceding consciousness. Thoughts are preconscious when they are unconscious at a particular moment, but are not repressed. Therefore, preconscious thoughts are available for recall and easily 'capable of becoming conscious'—a phrase attributed by Sigmund Freud to Josef Breuer.
Inspiration is an unconscious burst of creativity in a literary, musical, or visual art and other artistic endeavours. The concept has origins in both Hellenism and Hebraism. The Greeks believed that inspiration or "enthusiasm" came from the muses, as well as the gods Apollo and Dionysus. Similarly, in the Ancient Norse religions, inspiration derives from the gods, such as Odin. Inspiration is also a divine matter in Hebrew poetics. In the Book of Amos the prophet speaks of being overwhelmed by God's voice and compelled to speak. In Christianity, inspiration is a gift of the Holy Spirit.
Paul Copan is a Christian theologian, analytic philosopher, apologist, and author. He is currently a professor at the Palm Beach Atlantic University and holds the endowed Pledger Family Chair of Philosophy and Ethics. He has written and edited over 40 books in the area of philosophy of religion, apologetics, theology, and ethics in the Bible. He has contributed a great number of articles to various professional journals and has written many essays for edited books. For six years he served as the president of the Evangelical Philosophical Society.
Sigmund Freud's views on religion are described in several of his books and essays. Freud considered God as a phantasy, based on the infantile need for a dominant father figure, with religion as a necessity in the development of early civilization to help restrain our violent impulses, that can now be discarded in favor of science and reason.
Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint is an 1874 book by the Austrian philosopher Franz Brentano, in which the author argues that the goal of psychology should be to establish exact laws. Brentano's best known book, it established his reputation as a philosopher, helped to establish psychology as a scientific discipline, and influenced Husserlian phenomenology, analytic philosophy, gestalt psychology, and the philosopher Alexius Meinong's theory of objects. It has been called Brentano's greatest work, and it has been compared to the physician Wilhelm Wundt's Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie and the Project for a Scientific Psychology of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis.
Christian psychology is a merger of theology and psychology. It is an aspect of psychology adhering to the religion of Christianity and its teachings of Jesus Christ to explain the human mind and behavior. Christian psychology is a term typically used in reference to Protestant Christian psychotherapists who strive to fully embrace both their religious beliefs and their psychological training in their professional practice. However, a practitioner in Christian psychology would not accept all psychological ideas, especially those that contradicted or defied the existence of God and the scriptures of the Bible.
Divine Mercy University (DMU) is a private Catholic graduate university of psychology and counseling located in Sterling, Virginia in the United States.
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