A Theological Appraisal of the Works of Anna A. Terruwe and Conrad W. Baars

Abstract

Terruwe and Baars's explanation of neurotic repression is based upon Thomistic psychology. It has pastoral value, but it needs to be located within an authentic spiritual life. Their input shows what happens in the emotional sphere when moral teaching is excessively focused on voluntarist legalism and moral law and thus it is received not by reason or faith, but through disturbed feelings. The work of these Catholic psychotherapists is an important contribution to the necessary renewal of moral theology, akin to the works of other theologians who have noted shifts of emphasis in modern moral teaching all deriving from late mediaeval Nominalist philosophy. A return to the earlier theological synthesis of Aquinas offers a wider and optimistic perspective. The Dominican theologian had mentioned three ways that the control of the passions may be attempted, including the neurotic approach. Only the cultivation of virtue grants psychic wholeness and equilibrium. The opting for neurotic repression is caused by a deformation of the sensitive usefulness judgment (what Aquinas called the vis cogitativa) that is impacted by social pressure. Its correcting will facilitate the healthy eliciting of moral virtues and lead to internal psychic peace.