by Revista Espíritu | 170-2025
Hope is a protective factor for mental health, especially when a person goes through difficult situations in life. While it does not resolve the situation, it strengthens the individual by giving them reasons to persevere and make decisions that help them overcome life’s challenges. It is a resilience factor, closely related to what Viktor Frankl proposed with the notion of the meaning of life. The theological psychology of Thomas Aquinas allows for the integration of the human need for meaning with the call to participate in divine life, as Augustine of Hippo expressed when he exclaimed: “My heart is restless until it rests in You, Lord.” Integral psychotherapy cannot separate the need for meaning from participation in divine life, nor be satisfied with a merely pragmatic use of hope in therapeutic progress. Instead, it must understand the transformation that occurs in the person who directs their hope toward the supernatural end to which they have been called: beatitude.
by Revista Espíritu | 150-2015
Avicenna and Thomas Aquinas understand animal intelligence in reference to the activity of vis aestimativa, through which they explain animal behaviour as being consequent to an apprehensive appraisal of its environment. This apraisal must be distinguished from the representative knowledge of the phantasma, because it is not of per se sensed qualities, but per accidens, that Avicenna calls intentiones. Explaining animal behaviour from the vis aestimativa allows to understand it without attributing it to intelligence, which has been classically considered to be exclusive of rational beings’ conceptual knowledge of reality.
by Revista Espíritu | 154-2017
Contemporary explanations in Psychology of Emotions lack reference to the Aristotelian notion of nature. Subsequently, from this stance it is impossible to understand emotions as tendencies. This and some other deficiencies of contemporary Psychology, such as the confusion between emotion and cognition, are rooted in its Cartesian basis in this field. The present article will try to revalue the concept of nature as key to formally distinguish different psychological operations and to understand their dynamism and proper order in human beings.
