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Duquesne University of the Holy Ghost is a Catholic University,
founded by members of the Congregation of the Holy Ghost,
the Spiritans, and sustained through a partnership of laity
and religious. Duquesne University serves God by serving
students -- through commitment to excellence in liberal
and professional education, through profound concern for
moral and spiritual values, through the maintenance of an
ecumenical atmosphere open to diversity, and through service
to the Church, the community, the nation, and the world.
A phrase that repeatedly appears in the University's
promotional literature is "Education for the heart,
mind, and soul." In the early 1960s, under the leadership
of Father Adrian van Kaam, the Department of Psychology
instituted an existential-phenomenological approach to psychology.
In keeping with the spirit of the University's Mission,
the Department sought to found a psychology that, in Kierkegaard's
terms, would "Above all, hold onto what it means to
be human." The faculty worked to develop an approach
to psychology in which the methods and language of psychology
would be true to the full range of human experience, including
human spirituality.
While the goal was in part to develop a psychology
that served as a counterpoint to the reductionism and distorted
philosophical assumptions found in the classical psychoanalysis
and behaviorism of the time, it was also to provide a coherent
philosophical anthopology -- image of human being -- within
which the insights of various schools of psychology could
be critically integrated (see van Kaam, A. (1966): Existential
foundations of psychology, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University
Press).
This guiding philosophy has matured with the
field of psychology, but its central goal has remained:
to educate and train clinical psychologists whose core value
is to respect the dignity of human being.
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Mission
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