The mental health system, being controlled by the State along with the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, aims at keeping man in his fallen state. That is, this corrupt system, itself being a slave to the world, is only capable of further enslaving its patients in the same manner.
Wilhelm Wundt
Psychologists and psychiatrists claim to have the answers while they themselves are restricted by their bottom-line materialistic worldview. They reflect the scriptural teaching, “They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption” (2 Peter 2:19).
So how can this system, which sees child-murder and genital mutilation as morally good, be qualified and responsible for the well-being of a population? The answer is that only in a purely secular and godless society is this possible.
God made man in His own image and likeness, directing humanity to act for certain ends. Unlike plants and animals, man is rational and so naturally inclines toward knowing truth and choosing the good.
Secular Dehumanization
But truth and goodness are far from the mental health system’s goal. Instead, it’s quite the opposite.
Wilhelm Wundt, one of the fathers of modern psychology, was a relativist whose ideas still hold as the foundation of the current mental health system. He wrote in 1912, “There exist only changing and transient ideational processes.”
But an absurd line of thinking like this doesn’t just innocently sit in one’s mind; it has destructive effects, especially if one is dubbed a father of modern psychology.
It was denial of objective truth by Wundt and his contemporaries that resulted in even crazier ideas. For instance, Wundt wrote in his Outlines of Psychology, “The mental life of animals shows itself to be in its elements and in the general laws of their combination everywhere the same as that of man.”
The mental health system dehumanizes people in that it reduces man to an irrational animal. No longer is man made in the image and likeness of God with the sole purpose of glorifying Him, but human fulfillment for the mental health system is determined by whatever one wants it to be — mere feelings, financial freedom, human respect, etc.
When “truth” is subjectively determined by the creature over the Creator’s objective order and design, this is the cause of so-called mental illness. In this all-too-common case, a person rejects reality at the expense of their own well-being — but the temporal gain is, in their eyes, worth it.
“They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart” (Ephesians 4:18).
Humility vs. Pride
Hardness of heart is just pride, which, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, is when man “aims higher than he is … because he wishes to appear above what he really is” (ST, II-II, q. 162, a. 1).
St. Thomas Aquinas
Human flourishing, that is, human fulfillment and freedom, only occurs to the extent one diminishes personal pride. While the godless mental health system only bolsters pride, Catholicism steers man away from it. And this humble path leads to everything the mental health system promises but never delivers: well-being.
To be fully human is to see one’s self as he is, and this is the essence of humility, which Aquinas teaches to be in direct opposition to pride, and, therefore, serving as the true remedy for man’s distress, “mental illness,” and damage done by psychologists, psychiatrists and counselors.
Servant of God Fr. John Hardon, who was hand-picked by Pope St. John Paul II to catechize America, provides a solid blueprint for the elimination of pride:
We human beings cannot become humble unless we are humiliated, and this is one of the graces — one of the graces that God puts into our lives where he uses other people to humiliate us. And the more tendency we have to pride, the more we need others to humble, or better, humiliate us.
Hardon, one of the last faithful Jesuits around, spent much of his energy criticizing the mental health system for its assaults on Christian morality:
So many modern psychologists and psychiatrists tell their clients … “Don’t be a slave of your conscience. Satisfy your desires. You are in charge of your own life. You determine what is good, and you choose what you want.” … In all these cases, the demonic strategy is clear. Keep sinners in their sinful state of mind, and keep them from ever repenting of their sinful state of soul.
To flourish, man must humble himself,
as Christ did, even in suffering
The reasonable answer to the inescapable vicissitudes of life is not to blind one’s self to this tough reality, but rather to suffer it well — to embrace it so as to become a better man or woman. This “yes” to God’s order is the only way to find peace and joy, which is what all of us, especially those with serious mental disorders, are looking for.
This acceptance of the cross of life naturally leads to the Cross of Christ, who humbled Himself and came down as a man, concealed His infinite superiority to man, even subjected Himself to being crucified by man, all in order to save man.
This crucified life that all men are called to live has a psychomoral basis, which refers specifically to the human process of assenting to truth and choosing the good.
Go premium and watch the second episode of Church Militant’s brand new series Mental Health: Catholic Perspective to learn more.