For Part 1 of this essay, click here.
Philip Rieff’s 1966 book The Triumph of the Therapeutic examined how the therapeutic mentality had swept through secular culture. What was less noted at the time was that the therapeutic focus on self-love was also triumphing over the Christian emphasis on self-sacrifice. Although there are many superficial similarities between the two belief systems, a closer look reveals that humanistic psychology is a counterfeit of Christianity. It has a Christian “feel” but very little to do with Christ or with Christian virtues.
I’m not suggesting that there was any conscious attempt to counterfeit Christianity. It’s just that many Christians were attracted to humanistic psychology and were (perhaps unconsciously) looking for a way to synthesize it with their faith.
In any event, it wasn’t long before the assumptions of pop psychology had so smoothly and thoroughly permeated the churches that the vast majority of Christians failed to grasp that a fifth column had been invited in. Indeed, many now assume that the therapeutic version of Christianity, with its emphasis on tolerance and natural goodness, is the real thing.
In fact, however, the theory of human potentialism is an attack on the very heart of the Christian faith — the belief that Christ came to save us from our sins. But the self-esteem psychologists didn’t really believe in sin. On the contrary, they believed in the essential goodness of human nature. Maslow was quite up front about this. He once observed that if the doctrine of original sin were true, then his own theories were untenable.
The central tenet of human potential psychology is that people are basically good. The self-esteem movement rested on the belief that once you “get in touch” with your inner self and discover your essential goodness, self-esteem comes almost automatically. And, sure enough, as Catholics and other Christians learned to accept and esteem themselves, they saw fewer sins to confess.
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