Another must-read, this time from What's Wrong With The World; Lydia McGrew posts a link to this article, a 1994 interview with former Rogerian psychologist Dr. William Coulson, who talks about how humanistic psychotherapy destroys communities, including families and religious orders.
We've all heard discussed now and then (we Catholics, anyway) just what delicate and mysterious combination of social forces led to the collapse of Catholic religious orders in the last half of the 20th century. This article makes it plain that their collapse was no mystery, and that much of it was directly caused by the introduction of humanist psychology into these Catholic institutions. Ironically, this new approach was embraced initially as a way to strengthen these communities. They trusted themselves to "experts", and let the fox in to guard the chickens.
From Lydia McGrew's introduction;
...First, Coulson's story is an indictment of the pseudo-science of psychotherapy. As he tells the story, Rogers started out doing therapy with people who had solid ethical upbringings and hence fairly well-informed consciences. Rogers found that by prompting them with questions like, "What do you think?" he could get them to give themselves therapy, in a sense, to find good answers to their problems for themselves. He then proceeded to generalize this to the ridiculous idea that all of us can thus find the right answers (in heaven-knows-what sense of "right") if only we are encouraged to look within ourselves, be authentic, get in touch with our true feelings, and so forth. Authenticity then, predictably, became identified with rejecting whatever you had been taught previously, and especially with all forms of religious tradition, and when Rogers chose to do further work on the West coast, he found all manner of horrors and destruction flowing from his method. No kidding. Man is fallen after all.
Seriously, do take the time to read the whole thing.
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