Contradictions between Catholicism and psychology in the United States.

Abstract

A study of two conflicts between psychology and Catholic thinking in the twentieth century in the United States suggests that between psychology and religion there are intrinsic contradictions. In the mid-1890s, Edward A. Pace defended the new experimental psychology against attacks by Thomas Hughes, who argued that psychology abandons the soul and encourages utilitarianism in education. In the late 1940s, Fulton J. Sheen attacked psychoanalysis for its reductionism and he asserted the superiority of the sacrament of confession. His critics, mainly Catholic psychoanalysts, claimed that Sheen misrepresented what occurred in psychiatry. Underlying both conflicts were conflicting conceptions of human subjectivity.