Out of the ghetto: Integrating Catholics into mainstream psychology in the United States after World War II.

Abstract

The American Catholic Psychological Association (ACPA) was a voluntary association that formed and then transformed itself during a distinctive period of American history. Socially, American Catholics were primed to emerge from what they called their "ghetto," as this formerly largely immigrant group began to enter the economic and social mainstream. Institutions of higher education and psychology were recipients, moreover, of federal funding in the wake of World War II, and some of this money flowed to Catholic institutions. The ACPA began in 1947 as a way to bring Catholics in greater numbers into psychology and also to bring a Catholic perspective to bear on psychology. This article describes and analyzes the major initiatives of the ACPA: the establishment of undergraduate and graduate programs in psychology at Catholic colleges; placement services for members; and the development of psychological assessment programs for candidates for the religious life. In these ways, empirical psychological categories became part of Catholic discourses about psychological life. The ACPA voluntarily restructured itself in the late 1960s in response to a changed social environment and to a consensus that its first aim had been achieved. New issues were surfacing, making a denominational group irrelevant. The ACPA became Psychologists Interested in Religious Issues (PIRI) in 1970.