Paul Vitz

Paul C. Vitz (born August 27, 1935) is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at New York University, whose work focuses on the relationship between psychology and Christianity.

Career

Vitz is a native of Toledo, Ohio. He graduated with a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Michigan in 1957 and with a Ph.D. in Psychology from Stanford University in 1962.

Personal life

In an autobiographical section of Faith of the Fatherless, Vitz says that his own atheism as a young academic derived more from social conformity and a career need than from any damaged relationship with his father. In his view, his positive relationship with his father probably helped him to get past his temporary atheism and convert to the Catholic faith.

Books

Vitz believes there is a link between fatherlessness and anti-theism, as he hypothesizes in his book Faith of the Fatherless, the Psychology of Atheism (1999). The thesis of Faith of the Fatherless holds that famous believers—e.g., Blaise Pascal, Edmund Burke, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Karl Barth, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer—had strong and loving fathers, whereas their atheistic counterparts—e.g., Karl Marx, Joseph Stalin, Sigmund Freud, Mao Zedong, and Adolf Hitler—all had fathers who were weak, unloving, or absent. Thus, he says, philosophers, professors, and political tyrants who denounce God do so in order to relive traumatic childhood experiences and to subconsciously seek out help rather than to explore any sort of valid or respectable reasoning process.

In Psychology as Religion: The Cult of Self-Worship (1977), Paul Vitz maintains modern psychology has become a religion, a secular cult of self, now part of the problem of modern life rather than part of its resolution.

See also

• Postmodern psychology

External links

• Paul C. Vitz Resource Center