Terruwe and Baars's "Mortification Therapy": A Thomistic Approach?

Abstract

Drs. Anna Terruwe and Conrad Baars were once at the cut- ting edge of uniting psychiatry and Catholic thought. Practitioners of psycho anal ysis, they attempted to unite the rational psychology of St. Thomas Aquinas with the ego psychology of Freud, and pro- posed a controversial way of alleviating repression called morti- fication therapy. For reasons that were never stated, Terruwe was banned from treating clerics prior to the Second Vatican Council. Nevertheless, the ban was lifted soon after the council ended, and her practice, along with that of Baars, thrived: over several decades of combined work, they treated over 1,500 priests and religious, and a large number of Catholic laity. Terruwe and Baars published the details of mortification therapy in Psychic Wholeness and Healing: Using ALL the Powers of the Human Psyche, a work that focuses on treat- ing people who worry and obsess. Following the lead of Freud, Ter- ruwe and Baars suggest that sexual repression is the general cause of anxiety disorders. Mortification therapy was designed for patients who have anxi - ety about religious themes. The spectrum of severity ranges from people who get occasionally distracted by sexual thoughts, or