First Things RSS Feed - Paul C. Vitz https://www.firstthings.com/author/paul-c-vitz en-us Copyright 2025 First Things. All Rights Reserved. ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) Mon, 20 Jan 2025 16:50:55 -0500 https://d2201k5v4hmrsv.cloudfront.net/img/favicon-196.png First Things RSS Feed Image https://www.firstthings.com/rss/author/paul-c-vitz 60 The Sexual Crisis is a Crisis of Character https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2017/12/the-sexual-crisis-is-a-crisis-of-character https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2017/12/the-sexual-crisis-is-a-crisis-of-character Wed, 20 Dec 2017 06:00:00 -0500 That our country is in a sexual crisis is obvious from the large number of prominent men who are accused of aggressive sexual offenses against women. That number, still growing, is staggering. The historical roots and development of this crisis can be illuminated by a look at popular psychological theory.

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]]> Psychology in Recovery https://www.firstthings.com/article/2005/03/psychology-in-recovery https://www.firstthings.com/article/2005/03/psychology-in-recovery Tue, 01 Mar 2005 00:00:00 -0500 Modern psychology, like Caesar’s Gaul, has classically been divided into three parts: there is experimental psychology, test-and-measurement psychology, and therapeutic psychology. All three branches have been in steady operation since the late nineteenth century, and in all three of them one may observe, over that time, striking transformations that I think bode well for the future. As some readers may know, I was a public and rather harsh critic of much popular psychology in my first publications in the 1970s and ’80s. I stand by those views. But much has changed, and changed (to my surprise) for the better. Particularly in the therapeutic discipline, and specifically in the past generation, a new and salutary understanding of what psychotherapy is and is not has been developed. It is to these advances in psychotherapy that I will pay closest attention below. But I will begin by sketching the changes in psychology’s other two branches.

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]]> The Use and Abuse of Freud https://www.firstthings.com/article/1993/02/the-use-and-abuse-of-freud https://www.firstthings.com/article/1993/02/the-use-and-abuse-of-freud Mon, 01 Feb 1993 00:00:00 -0500 Freudian Fraud: The Malignant Effect of Freud’s Theory on American Thought and Culture
by E. Fuller Torrey, M.D.
HarperCollins, 362 pages, $25

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]]> The Complexities of Morality https://www.firstthings.com/article/1991/10/the-complexities-of-morality https://www.firstthings.com/article/1991/10/the-complexities-of-morality Tue, 01 Oct 1991 00:00:00 -0400 Varieties of Moral Personality: Ethics and Psychological Realism
by Owen Flanagan
Harvard University Press, 336 pages, $34.95

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