This is second of mt four part series on the personality theory of Adrian van Kaam.

Echoing Erik Erikson’s discussion of wisdom, the Catholic priest and psychologist Adrian van Kaam (1987) argues that human life is fundamentally “an intimate participation in an all pervasive mystery of formation and transformation, in commitment to and congeniality with our formation tradition, and where and when possible, in compatibility with the varied ways in which the same mystery may speak to adherents of other traditions in their genuine striving for intimacy with the mystery” (p. 114).  Some might question the appropriateness for psychology of a theological term like mystery.  And yet as K. Rahner (1978) argues “we can never philosophize as though man had not had that experience which is the experience of Christianity.”  Given this historical reality a “philosophy that is absolutely free of theology is not even possible.”  Like philosophy, contemporary psychology arose within the broadly Christian intellectual tradition.  As such, and again like philosophy, the autonomy of psychology “can only consist in the fact that it reflects upon its historical origins and asks whether it sees itself as still bound to these origins in history and in grace as something valid, and whether this self-experience of man can still be experienced today as something valid and binding” (p. 25).

To understand his work, we need to keep in mind that van Kaam is not simply a Christian thinker, but a Catholic thinker.  His use of the term mystery is an example of his dependence (though not in an exclusive fashion) on the Medieval Christian tradition.  He unapologetically identifies his theoretical and practical reliance not only on St. Thomas Aquinas but also others in the Thomistic and transcendental Thomistic schools such as St. John of the Cross, Karl Rahner and Hans Küng as well as phenomenologists such as Stephen Strasser (1983, p. xv).  The difference, as Byrne (1982) argues, is that where the medieval era focused on the (static) “mystery of Being,” van Kaam offers the more dynamic idea of “the mystery of Being-in-formation.” This overarching dynamism, that “the universe, world, history and humanity are always engaged in a process of formation” is the “fundamental perspective or intuition” that underlies van Kaam’s personality theory (p. 114). Continue reading →