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. 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 American grade school has resulted in a removal of conservative religion, family, and economic views from children's textbooks.

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, Paul C. Vitz (Guilford Press, 1988)
• Censorship: Evidence of Bias in Our Children's Textbooks (Servant Books, 1986)
• 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