Theology and Psychotherapy in Search of a Common Language

For the sake of facilitating communication between the fields of theology and psychotherapy, this talk will highlight terms that may seem to signal common ground between the disciplines, even though the disciples may use them in divergent and even contradictory ways; for example, person, will, conscience, love, transcendence, and grace.

Target Audience: All catholic mental health professionals

Course Content Level: Beginner

Learning Objectives: 

• Find understanding of the perspective that Catholic philosophy and theology has brought to some of the same dimensions of the human person that are the focus of psychotherapy.

• Identify a critical awareness of the way in which the same terms may sometimes be used quite differently, and with different anthropological and ontological presuppositions.

• Identify knowledge that may assist them to engage in as well as to facilitate fruitful dialogue between the disciplines of theology and psychology.