Thomistic Psychology: Critique of Terruwe and Baars

Fundamental to Aquinas’ understanding of emotions is that they are passive. It is better, when discussing the details of Aquinas’ theory, to not use the word emotion at all, since there is no single Latin word that corresponds to it (there is no word “emotion” in Latin). For instance, when the Fathers of the English Domincan Province translated a Latin word into “emotion” in English, it was generally not the word “passio,” which they translate into “passion,” but rather “affectio” or “commotio.” Terruwe and Baars retranslate “passio” itself into “emotion,” perhaps because this has a greater emphasis on movement. Gradually they forget that “passio” does always mean a passive power, a “moved mover,” never an unmoved mover. And this is a crucial mistake.

For Aquinas, as for Aristotle before him, the passions are only active in response to some active principle – in most general terms, what they call the “apprehended appetible,” something that can be chosen as good (and hence be the object of an appetite) that currently resides in one of the powers of apprehension (either the intellect, the internal senses, or the external senses) as an unmoved mover. Aristotle uses the metaphor of a ball-and-socket joint: for the arm to wave about, the socket of the shoulder must be stationary. The arm itself while moving is a moved mover; the shoulder is the unmoved mover, without which no movement could originate. The same is the case with the powers of apprehension. Only in response to something actually apprehended can the

passions be put into operation: they are moved movers.

As such, the authors’ claim that the passions could have “lives of their own” is foreign to the Thomistic framework. For a passion to be in operation, it must be responding to some current thought, image, or sensation in the person. If it is not responding to one of these, it is not in act.

Repression in Aquinas

Is there room in Thomistic rational psychology for the concept of repression? One could argue that the word itself tempts the imagination too much into forming an image of one emotion pressing down another, or (as Terruwe and Baars suggest) one emotion placing itself physically as a wedge between reason and another emotion. As an appetite of the soul, emotions are necessarily object-directed. They do not exert any motion except toward or away from their objects themselves, and never act as levers or wedges. To respect this, a more accurate word is avoidance, which certainly has a place in Thomistic psychology.

Aquinas says that all of the powers of the soul require attention in order to carry out their acts (I-II, 77, 1). The will can choose to focus on any given object; it can do so either actually or habitually. Should the will choose to consider, for instance, an injury that was done to one, it will incite the passion of anger or sadness. Should it choose to not consider the injury, it will tend to not incite those passions. This is independent of the judgment of the particular reason, which may, in a given situation, judge that an injury has taken place. The point is that such a judgment, once made, may be deliberately unattended, leaving the passions un-incited. If one has done this repeatedly, the process may become habitual, taking place with only a minimum of attention.

This is the natural process by which the will directs the appetites. It is necessarily involved in the exercise of the virtues of fortitude and temperance, which perfect the irascible and concupiscible appetites. Its mode of operating is termed persuasion, since the will cannot fully command the movement of an appetite as it does the movement of a limb; rather, it must choose to focus attention on some particular object that then itself “persuades” the movement of the passion. St Thomas remarks that everyone knows this by their own experience: if we choose to consider sad things, we start to feel sad, and so on. This natural dominion of persuasion which the will exercises can have the effect of not inciting a certain passion habitually, if the will finds that passion aversive. This would constitute avoidance of that emotion, which may be the most general form of avoidance possible, since the will would have to dis-attend whatever could instigate the emotion.

More specific forms of avoidance would simply involve not attending to particular memories, images, or thoughts that the particular reason judges as unsuitable and the will finds aversive. The word “repression,” on the other hand, implies that some force of willpower is applied to the passion directly, as if by command, as one would move a limb. It misses the important fact that man governs his passions by persuasion, not by command.

The other way in which man governs his passions by persuasion is by bringing considerations of truth to bear on the judgments of the particular reason. The particular reason, also called the cogitative power, is grouped by St Thomas with the internal senses of memory and imagination, as those powers of the soul that consider particulars, and work in unison with the intellect. The cogitative power is most closely aligned with the intellect; the former judges particulars, while the latter attends to universals. Guided by the intellect, the particular reason can evaluate whether or not its judgments are true, and whether any valid generalizations can be made from some particular consideration. If exaggerated judgments had been made, these would tend to produce exaggerated emotional responses: for instance, if a cook were to burn a particular meal, and made the judgment, “I can’t do anything right, I’m a failure,” he would likely feel quite sad. If he decided to question this judgment and review the situation, he may recall that he has in fact done many fine meals, that his employers are always praising his work, and so on. By choosing to investigate the distorted judgment to bring it into conformity with reality, the cook rules his passions by persuasion.

Thus persuasion by the will has two modes of operation: the first, more quick but more primitive, by directing the soul’s attention; the second, more laborious yet more mature, by rationally engaging particular judgments. The first mode may be used in avoidance of aversive stimuli, and may occur habitually; the second requires a higher action of the will, in that it must direct the tandem work of the intellect and the cogitative power in an active process of enquiry. Shifting attention does not achieve resolution of a particular judgment, but it does allow the person greater time for rational enquiry; and so both processes are ultimately aimed, in the healthy individual, to a life in which the passions are subject to reason.

The Formation of Virtue

The authors contrast the state of one with repressed emotions with the state of the emotionally mature individual. In their chapter on the therapy of repression neuroses, they state:

Another indication that the obsessive-compulsive patient is not free in sexual
matters is the increase in fear and restlessness that follow when he foregoes the
gratification of the sexual urge. In the non-neurotic person the freely renounced
act of masturbation is followed by calm and peace, and, in time, an ever greater
ease in guiding and directing his sexual desires in such a way that he leads a truly
moral life. This is in stark contrast to the obsessive-compulsive neurotic whose
repressing emotions gain in intensity over the years, and sooner or later lead to
obsessive preoccupation with sexual thoughts and fantasies, and compulsive
performance of acts he has always willed not to commit. Because his disordered
neurotic condition is foreign to human nature, time is always against him. Sooner
or later his outwardly successful repressive mechanisms will break down with all
its frightening and disabling consequences for him.” (ibid, p 117-118)

This passage in significant, both from a psychiatric perspective, and from the perspective of Thomistic moral philosophy.

The authors stress the importance that, in order for their advice to apply to any individual, that person must be diagnosed beforehand with an obsessive-compulsive neurosis. If there is no OCD, there is no proper application of mortification therapy. The difficulty with this is that the authors themselves are not consistent in their identification of true obsessive-compulsive disorder, at least from the perspective of modern psychiatric diagnosis.

As was mentioned above, an obsession is an unwanted, irrational, repetitive, intrusive, and anxiety-provoking thought. True obsessions always have these characteristics. By their nature, obsessions are repugnant to the will of the individual who suffers from them, and they strike their intellect as absurdities (which they fear nevertheless). The preoccupation with sexual thoughts and fantasies which Baars and Terruwe describe cannot be called an obsession if the object of their thoughts is something the person truly desires, for then the thought would not be unwanted. Nor are sexual thoughts irrational – they naturally occur to every healthy human being. True sexual obsessions occur on taboo themes (incest, homosexuality, violence) and strike their sufferers as hideous; rather than fantasizing about them, their sufferers make every effort possible to suppress

them. A person who voluntarily entertains sexual fantasies, at least on a given topic, can be safely said to not have obsessions on that topic. It should be said that this goes against the popular notion of obsession, which may be better described as a monomania – a high school girl who has a crush on a boy may have repetitive, intrusive thoughts of him, and may describe herself as “obsessed” with him – but unless these thoughts are also unwanted, irrational, and anxiety-provoking, no clinical obsessions exist.

Compulsions are behaviors which neutralize the obsession, and include such behaviors as hand washing, ordering, checking, seeking reassurances, repeating actions, and performing ritualized mental acts. The goal of the compulsion is to reduce the distress caused by the obsession; they are not pleasurable acts in themselves. A better adjective to describe acts that have something pleasurable as a goal is impulsive. In general, people with OCD tend to be much less impulsive than people without OCD, especially if it is an impulse about which they obsess. Even more significantly, people who obsess on a given theme – i.e., a young mother who suffers from obsessions of stabbing her baby – are extremely unlikely to act on them. With some themes there has not been any single case identified where a person has acted on the obsession – which is why doctors do not notify Child Protective Services if the mother has homicidal obsessions, and they do not counsel that the mother spend time away from the child. (This distinction between homicidal

thoughts that occur in a psychotically depressed individual and one with OCD is not particularly difficult to make, but one should always refer to a psychiatrist to make it.) The idea that people who have obsessions will inevitably act on them in a compulsive way involves fundamental misunderstandings of the nature of both obsessions and compulsions.

From a Thomistic standpoint, the passage cited above shows a misunderstanding of the virtue of continence. Continence is a virtue in the will, by which the person chooses to not follow vehement desires for pleasures of touch. It is distinguished from temperance, which is a virtue that resides in the desires themselves, by which those desires are properly ordered in accordance with reason. To the degree a person has temperance, they are not moved by wayward desires; if a person has wayward desires but chooses not to act on them, they are continent but not temperate. Temperance is a greater good than continence, since in the temperate man even his sensitive desires are subject wholly to reason. Still, continence is a necessary virtue since it shapes the passions, getting them accustomed to act in accord with reason.

The continent will necessarily experience tension as they resist their vehement passions, and it is by resisting their passions that they gradually forge temperance in themselves. The tension only subsides when temperance is achieved. What the authors state is true of the “non-neurotic person” is true only if that person has the virtue of temperance – the virtue to which continence tends, according to the maxim that in matters of virtue and vice one proceeds from the imperfect to the perfect.

It is difficult to conceive in Thomistic terms how Baars and Terruwe’s method leads one along the inclined plane from incontinence to continence to virtue. To have disordered desires but to not act on them is a virtue that they have turned into a vice; to “tolerate” acting out on a disordered desire with the purpose of restoring order to another disordered passion, and to thus attain the easy serenity of virtue, violates the most basic principles St Thomas taught on the nature of the will and the passions as subjects of virtue and vice.

Kevin D Majeres, MD