Introduction

It is a privilege to be able to introduce the readers of Integratus to the life and work of my father, Catholic psychiatrist Conrad Baars. A survivor of Buchenwald Concentration Camp, he became disillusioned with the secular Freudian approach to therapeutic intervention. Through the hand of Providence, he was introduced to the work of Dr. Anna Terruwe, which changed the trajectory of his life and career. Terruwe, a Dutch Catholic psychiatrist, had been successful in pioneering the rational psychology of St. Thomas Aquinas as the foundation for her work with clients with obsessive compulsive symptoms. In addition, she identified a syndrome in adults caused by a deprivation of love in childhood. Terruwe realized that these persons needed the remedy of someone's receptive, affective presence, which she called affirmation. She observed that contrary to some of the more active treatments, it was crucial to simply be with rather than do much with these persons.