William Coulson and his colleague Carl Rogers “corrupted a whole raft of religious orders on the west coast in the ’60s by getting the nuns and priests to talk about their distress,” Coulson said in a 1994 interview with Latin Mass Magazine.
He, a Catholic, had been point man for Rogers’ California operation. The sisters, the Immaculate Heart of Mary (IHM) nuns, came looking for help. Rogers had created non-directive counselling, in which the “client” (his term) knew best and the counsellor was simply to help him become his real self and “go with the flow,” as TV’s Bob Newhart had his feckless, comic psychologist clients do in the ‘70s in The Bob Newhart Show.
Coulson, interviewed by Dr. Wm. Marra, made a clean breast of it, offering a grimly fascinating account of crazy thinking gone especially wild in the fields of the Lord. The IHM sisters found themselves, and it wasn’t the ones who had vowed poverty, etc. and united in community. The congregation evaporated under the strain of group encounter sessions led by Rogers, Coulson, and the rest.
The problem was, they didn’t count on evil. Their counterpart Abraham Maslow, also in the self-realization business, discovered it, however, and warned them. “Maslow believed in evil, and we didn’t. He said our problem was our total confusion about evil.”
He said, there was “danger in our thinking and acting as if there were no paranoids or psychopaths or SOBs in the world to mess things up.” Too late, however, not until 1979, by which time the damage was done, said Coulson.
Rogers, a good man, wasn’t the problem; his confusion was.
As long as Rogers and those who feared Rogers’ judgement were present it was okay, because nobody fooled around in the presence of Carl Rogers. He kept people in line; he was a moral force. People did, in fact, consult their consciences, and it looked like good things were happening.
Among other bad things was the incursion of their process into Catholic schools, from which Coulson and his wife pulled their kids while he was still a Rogerian. Her “common sense” decided the matter. [Thank God for wives with common sense.]
Catholics in general had “one wretched line” from a Vatican 2 document, cited by Marra, that in its broad sweep and indeterminacy open the way to nonsense: “As they advance in years, children should be given a positive and prudent education in sexuality.”
It did not say Catholics school needed “school-based” sex education, said Marra. But it paved the way nonetheless, he said.
People went on to teach “children that they can make wrong right by choosing it, as long as they are sincere in their choice,” said Coulson, who is extremely leery of the whole National Catholic Education Association, advising people to stay away from its conferences. At these conferences, he said,
[Y]ou get the impression that people are on the make. They see themselves now as “whole persons,” and they justify their sexualized behavior on the basis
of that theory. It was better when we were more repressed.
As for Rogers and his effect on schools in general, “The basic message is that education, classroom education, is a variant on group psychotherapy.” [Some years back, hearing a junior-high principal report glowingly on her school during a referendum campaign in Oak Park, I thought and wrote that hers was clearly a therapeutic model. How the kids felt was everything.]
As for the Catholic scene:
[T]his helps account for a lot of what goes on in Catholic youth
retreats these days, and Catholic sex education, where the kids sit in
circles, and talk about their feelings. They explore what Rogers honestly
characterized as increasingly dangerous feelings.
On the other hand, there is the examined life, promoted by Aristotle and not least of all by the Catholic Church:
[T]his examination of conscience is done with a constant reference to what we know is right. It is not something yet to be invented, but something that has been known for almost 2,000 years. The examination is guided by what I call Catholic equipment. The list that I used to consult as a young Catholic in the ’50s told me in advance what I should be looking for. I knew venial and mortal sins inside and out, not because I had discovered this knowledge within my own experience, but because it was provided for me by the Church, which had my best interests at heart. [Italics added]
Not because I had discovered this knowledge within my own experience, but because it was provided for me by the Church. He was not required to find it. What do you know about that!
Blithe Spirit 