Are you interested in providing clinical care through a faith-based lens? Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota recently launched a Master of Science in Clinical Psychology program. This online program offers a distinctive Catholic-integrated curriculum with the ethical, evidence-based practice of health service psychology. It is based on the new American Psychological Association (APA) accreditation standards for master’s programs in health service psychology and provides a comprehensive understanding of the Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person (CCMMP) throughout clinical psychology training. Here, we discuss what the CCMMP is and how it supports effective and ethical clinical practice.
Key Takeaways
- The Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person is a holistic framework for care that integrates philosophical, theological, and psychological
- The CCMMP emphasizes 11 premises, or foundational principles that offer insights into the complex qualities of human nature.
- The 11 premises of the CCMMP are that the person is 1) created, 2) fallen, 3) redeemed, 4) a unified body-soul, 5) fulfilled through vocation, 6) fulfilled in virtue, 7) interpersonally relational, 8) created with sensory-perceptual-cognitive capacities, 9) emotional, 10) rational, and 11) volitional and free.
- The CCMMP provides a framework for clinical practice grounded in professional ethics, theory, and research that illuminates human dignity and flourishing.
What Is a Meta-Model in Psychology?
In the field of psychology, a meta-model is an overarching theory or framework for understanding the whole person. It provides an integrative approach that takes all aspects of the person into account while avoiding reductionism or other limited views of the human person, as far as possible.
There are thousands of theories in psychology. No theory has human nature completely figured out. Psychological theories often focus on one or a few factors of the person without taking the whole into account. Various meta-models offer an underlying framework that supports, unifies, and enhances other theories. For example, Cognitive Behavioral Theory focuses strongly on cognition, behavior, and emotion but does not emphasize the unconscious, attachment styles, or defense mechanisms as strongly. A meta-model can support a clinician’s use of Cognitive Behavioral Theory by offering complimentary insights from other theories, for example, psychodynamic theory and attachment theory, to fill in the gaps.
The Three “Lenses” or Perspectives
The Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person views the human person through different lenses or perspectives to enrich the view of the person. These lenses are:
- Philosophical: The CCMMP integrates Western philosophy to outline its assumptions about the person, especially the Thomistic and Aristotelian philosophical schools.
- Theological: The CCMMP integrates Catholic Christian theology to provide a foundational understanding of human dignity, goodness, and disorder.
- Psychological: The CCMMP integrates various psychological theories, attempting to take the best of each theory and allowing the theories to communicate and support one another, which leads to the patient
In the view of the CCMMP, each layer of the person described in the 11 premises resonates or integrates with each other layer. For example, the emotional layer of the human experience resonates with the social layer, and the social layer resonates with the vocational layer. When the human person “resonates” this leads to flourishing (i.e., wellbeing, happiness, etc.), but when these layers do not resonate, the person languishes (i.e., psychological disorder, illness, sin, etc.). Each lens works together to provide a picture of languishing and flourishing to the clinician for the healing of each patient.
Core Ideas
The three-lens-, or three-wisdom-tradition approach of the CCMMP rests on 11 premises as follows:
- Created: The person has an essential core of goodness, dignity, and value and seeks flourishing of self and others.
- Fallen: The person commonly experiences types of pain, suffering, anxiety, depression, or other disorders. Ignorance, that is lack of knowledge, and sin, that is missing the mark, can also contribute to dysfunction.
- Redeemed: The person, with the help of others, can find hope, support, and healing, correct harmful behaviors, and find meaning and flourishing through reason and transcendence.
- Personal Unity: Each human being is a body-soul composite with a unique personal identity that develops over time in a sociocultural, biological context.
- Fulfilled Through Vocation: Each person’s flourishing is a calling/journey into an adventurous, committed state of life, including: a) holiness: commitment to God, values, and transcendence, b) marriage, religious calling, dedicated singleness, and c) meaningful work, service, and leisure.
- Fulfilled in Virtue: Voluntarily developing habits of service, use of one’s strengths, moral character, resilience, and spiritual maturity in thought, will, emotions, and relationships, etc. can lead to flourishing, attainment, and wellbeing.
- Interpersonally Relational: The person is intrinsically interpersonal and formed throughout life by relationships: family, romantic partners, friends, co-workers, colleagues, communities, and society.
- Sensory-Perceptual-Cognitive: The person is in sensory-perceptual-cognitive interaction with external reality and has the use of related capacities, such as imagination and memory.
- Emotional: The person has the capacity for emotion. Emotions, which involve feelings, sensory and physiological responses, and tendencies to respond, provide the person with knowledge of external reality, others, and self.
- Rational: The person has a rational capacity which involves reason, self-consciousness, language, and sophisticated cognitive capacities, expressing multiple types of intelligence.
- Volitional and Free: The person has a free will and is an agent with moral responsibility when free will is exercised. This includes altruism, and selfishness.
These core ideas provide a strong moral and ethical framework for psychological practice. They benefit the clinician as well. Not only can clinicians deliver a higher quality of care, but they also have greater clarity and support for their Christian identity as mental health professionals.
How This Framework Shapes Clinical Care
The framework provided by the Catholic Christian meta-model offers several benefits for the clinician. First, it gives them a more complete and dignified understanding of patients and their needs. For example, let’s say a young man is suffering from severe anxiety about his work. Following the CCMMP, the clinician can identify other factors that contribute to his anxiety. Maybe work-life balance between his vocation to marriage, raising children, and holding a job are stressful, or maybe he lacks a supportive community. At the same time, there may be facilitating factors – strong marriage can become a resource for treatment, and the clinician may decide to provide couples counseling to take advantage of this resource.
Earn Your Psychology Degree at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota
The CCMMP strengthens the clinician to provide effective, holistic clinical practice. Start your psychology career at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota, where the meta-model is a key focus of our master’s degree curriculum. To learn more about our program, request more info or apply now for admission.
Catholic Christian Meta-Model FAQ
How is a meta-model different from a therapy method or technique?
Therapy methods and techniques are specific treatments. A meta-model is a holistic framework for treatment that informs clinicians of which methods or techniques to use.
Can a faith-based framework be used ethically with non-Christian patients?
The Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the person can be used ethically with patients of all religious backgrounds whether or not faith is a topic within the therapy room.
What boundaries should clinicians maintain when discussing spirituality?
The meta-model is a way for a clinician to think about their patients. Clinicians think about their patients in a variety of ways, sometimes clinician thinking is shared with a patient and often times, such conceptual thinking is not vocalized due to maintaining professional ethics and boundaries. The therapy room is a place for healing to occur. It is not the role of the clinician to proselytize, offer spiritual direction, or coerce the patient in any way. Clinicians should respect the patient’s free will and need for safety within the therapeutic frame and in accordance with professional ethics.
