Charles Arthur Curran

Charles Arthur Curran (1913–1978)^[2] was a Jesuit priest and psychologist who is best known as the creator of Community Language Learning (CLL), a method in education and specifically in Second Language Teaching.

He was a central member of the psychology faculty at Loyola University Chicago,^[3] and a counseling specialist.^[4]

Career

Curran received a Doctorate in Psychology from Ohio State University in 1944.^[5]

As a psychologist and educator, he worked along with Carl Rogers,^[6] and took certain principles from person-centered therapy and applied them to the field of education.

In 1952,^[7] Curran proposed the essential idea of the "Counseling-Learning" approach, or "counselearning".^[8] He incorporated counseling techniques that take into account the students' feelings toward their learning experience, and are meant to lower the affective filter. In the early 1970s he proposed Community Language Learning as a method based on his approach. His views, which were mostly promoted and tested by his students Paul G. La Forge (1971) and Taylor (1979), among others, gained particular attention and prominence in the 1990s.

As a priest, he wrote several books in which he addressed the topic of institutionalized religious education, and the theological concept of sin compared to the sense of guilt in psychotherapy.^[9]

Part of the problem of the human condition, in Curran's view, was the "mechanized concept of man," or the idea that man is merely a machine (something that he saw as the result of industrialism and scientism, and criticized).^[10] In his writings, he advocated a change in the "approach to the human person" or a "return to a more ancient unified view of man".

Works

Books

• Personality Factors in Counseling (1945)
• Counseling in Catholic life and education (1952)
• A Catholic Psychologist Looks at Pastoral Counseling (1959)
• The concept of sin and guilt in psychotherapy (1960)
• Counseling and Psychotherapy: The Pursuit of Values (1968)
• Religious Values in Counseling and Psychotherapy (1969)
• Psychological Dynamics in Religious Living (1971)
• Counseling-learning: A Whole-person Model for Education (1972)
• Counseling-learning in Second Languages (1976)
• Understanding: An essential ingredient in human belonging (1978)

Papers

• "Religious Factors and Values in Counseling: Counseling, Religion and Man (1958). The Catholic Counselor and Readings. Volume 3, Issue 1, pages 3–24, Autumn
• Some Ethical and Scientific Values in the Counseling Therapeutic Process (September 1960). Personnel and Guidance Journal. 39:15-29.
• Counseling, Psychotherapy, and the Unified Person (1963). Journal of Religion and Health.
• Religious Factors and Values in Counseling: Counseling, Religion and Man

References

Bibliography

• C. Kevin Gillespie (2001). "Psychology and American Catholicism: From Confession to Therapy?". Crossroad Pub.
• Robert Kugelmann (2011), "Psychology and Catholicism: Contested Boundaries".