Psychology and Vocations

“Recourse to Psychology Within the Vocational Journey: Vatican II and Post-Conciliar Documents”. The use of psychological testing and services has become a commonplace in the American dioceses and houses of formation. However, the routine and special recourse to psychology is not without its problems and critics. On the one hand, church leaders acknowledge their limitations in the realm of psychology and the advantages of collaborating with professionals to provide assistance to vocational candidates. On the other hand, those same church leaders are aware that an ecclesial vocation and the life of faith are not simply psychological phenomena. The established pattern of cooperation in the current milieu is a division of labor absent a guiding understanding of the most important issues facing human and faith formation. A more complete and authentic response to the current situation would seem to rest on the transposition of earlier achievements in the ongoing collaboration of theologians and psychologists into the context of interiority analysis and the third stage of meaning.