Paul Vitz

Paul Vitz is a Psychology professor at New York University. He graduated with a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Michigan in 1957 and with a Ph.D in Psychology fromStanford University in 1962. An atheist until he was in his late 30s, he is now a practicing Roman Catholic. His focus is on the connection between Christianity and Psychology. He is a member of the fellowship of Catholic Scholars, but also has strong contact to Evangelical Protestant organizations and deeply religious Jews.

Vitz criticizes liberalism and believes there is a link between fatherlessness and atheism, as he demonstrates in his book Faith of the Fatherless, the Psychology of Atheism (1999). The thesis of Faith of the Fatherless holds that famous believers—e.g., Blaise Pascal, Edmund Burke, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Karl Barth, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer—had strong and loving fathers, whereas their atheistic counterparts—e.g., Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Sigmund Freud, Mao Zedong and Adolf Hitler—all had fathers who were weak, unloving, or absent. Thus, philosophers, professors, and political tyrants who denounce God do so in order to relive traumatic childhood experiences and to subconsciously seek out help rather than to explore any sort of valid or respectable reasoning process.

In his book Psychology as Religion: The Cult of Self Worship he contends that Psychology, based on current theories and practice, is often times damaging. By a series of 'blaming' incidents for childhood experiences and 'trauma', people have victimhood placed upon them and therefore become victims.

In Censorship: Evidence of bias in our children's textbooks (1986) Vitz shows how "a widespread secular and liberal mindset" within the professional education community has resulted in the removal of conservative religious, family, and economic descriptions of American life from children's textbooks. Even a person holding to the idea of a "noble pagan" believing in the virtues of hard work, discipline, patriotism, and concern for others has good reason to reject all state-approved social studies textbooks. For the sentimentalized propoganda of gradeschool textbooks scoffs at even these beliefs by censorship through their exclusion. These textbooks make millions of Americans who hold traditional views of marriage, business, and politics seem alien and on the fringe.

Vitz and Creativity

Vitz has stated that the academic, or secular humanistic, idea of creativity since the 19th century has been deeply flawed. Instead Vitz suggests a different definition of creativity:

“

For a Christian, however, all creativity has its origin in God; and to claim that an individual human is really creative is either silly or blasphemous. A person can express his individual capacity in a creative fashion only by aligning himself with God's will. Real creativity requires a soul cooperating with God— a soul who becomes God's loving agent in all its activity however mundane.

”

Works

• Psychology As Religion: The Cult of Self-Worship (Wm. B. Eerdmans 1977, 1994 2nd Ed.)
• Modern Art and Modern Science: The Parallel Analysis of Vision, authored with Arnold B. Glimcher (Praeger, 1984)
• Sigmund Freud's Christian Unconscious, (Guilford Press, 1988)
• Censorship: Evidence of Bias in Our Children's Textbooks (Servant Books, 1986)

• Presented (at timestamp 20 minutes 00 seconds) in Clergy in the classroom [videorecording] : the religion of secular humanism. (Manitou Springs, CO : Summit Ministries ; Cleveland, OH : American Portrait Films, c1998.

• The Course of True Love: Marriage in High School Textbooks, a Report to the Nation from the Council on Families (Institute for American Values, 1998)
• Defending the Family: A Sourcebook, edited with Stephen M. Krason (Catholic Social Science Press, 1998)
• Faith of the Fatherless: The Psychology of Atheism (Spence Publishing Company, 1999)
• The Self: Beyond the Postmodern Crisis, edited with Susan M. Felch (ISI Books, 2006)

External Links

• Faith of the Fatherless, the Psychology of Atheism
• Paul C. Vitz Resource Center