Willem Duynstee was a Dutch Catholic priest, jurist, moralist, and professor born at Sittard, the Netherlands, in 1886. After gaining a doctorate in criminal law in 1908, Willem joined the Redemptorists and was ordained a priest in 1913. In 1935, he was the first to provide a Thomist understanding of psychological repression and therapy which was fundamentally different from that of the neurologist Sigmund Freud. Duynstee was proficient in the anthropology and philosophy of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, whereas Freud invented his own language and explanations for what became the onset of psychoanalysis. Duynstee demonstrated philosophically how emotional repression is caused by harmful judgments that start in the internal senses.Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (ST),, Second and Revised Edition, Benziger Brothers Publishers Inc, New York, 1947; I-II, q.77, aa.1-2. (Online Edition Copyright © 2017 by Kevin Knight links referenced with permission.) According to Duynstee, these sense judgments misdirect the irascible emotions, such as fear and anger. These in turn displace right reason and bury alive the pleasurable emotions of love, desire, and joy. Duynstee diagnosed the cause of repression as being within the internal senses, specifically erroneous harmful cogitative judgments that misguide the emotions. He went on to provide an explanation for a morally acceptable sound therapy to remediate the emotional repressive disorder. Anna Terruwe, Duynstee's protege, built on his insights and went on to call it Mortification Therapy (MT).
Biography
Willem Jacobus Antonius Joseph Duynstee was born in Sittard in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Roermond on 6 September 1886. The Duynstee Family originally came from The Hague. Willem's grandfather, Jacobus Johannes Duijnstee, was a bricklayer and his grandmother was Maria Theresia Leenen. They had three boys and two girls. Willem's father Theodorus Johannes Antonius Duynstee married Adriana Wilhelmina Reuther in 1883 and together they had four girls and four boys, one of whom was Willem. Theodore after studying law became a jurist, judge, politician, and eventually was elected a member of the Dutch House of Representatives of the General States.
Willem Duynstee received his primary education at Druten and Roermond and sat for his higher citizen school entrance exam (HBS) at Roermond and Den Bosch (i.e., ‘s-Hertogenbosch). Willem completed his high school education, and in 1904 sat for his university entrance exam at the Stedelijk Gymnasium in Den Bosch, where he excelled.
Following in his father Theodore’s footsteps Duynstee studied law but went on to have an outstanding career as an academic, professor, and religious missionary. He became a conservative theologian in his Catholic teaching and practice.L’Osservatore Romano, Front Page Italian daily edition, Vatican City State, November 14, 1968. p.2.
Legal studies
Shadowing the successful steps of his father, Duynstee commenced his reading of law at the Municipal University of Amsterdam. He achieved a degree in civil law and completed his legal studies in 1908 with a doctoral degree in criminal law. Duynstee, throughout his life, remained an active lawyer before the Bar of Dutch Jurists.JP de Valk, "Duynstee, Willem Jacobus Antonius Joseph (1886-1968)", in the Biographical Dictionary of the Netherlands Huygens ING, Amsterdam; http://resources.huygens.knaw.nl/bwn1880-2000/lemmata/bwn2/duynstee [11-12-2013].
Many presumed that Duynstee would pursue a legal career, but upon completing his law degree, he immediately sought entrance into the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, whose spiritual founder was the celebrated Italian lawyer from Naples, Alphonsus Maria de Liguori. Afterwards in 1920, as a religious priest, he fulfilled doctoral studies in Ecclesiastical Law, specializing in the Canon law of the Catholic Church with a second doctorate from the University of Amsterdam.
Duynstee was well-versed in the writings of Thomas Aquinas and consistently promoted and employed Aquinas’ insights in all his writings and teachings of philosophy, theology, law, and psychology.
Religious life
Entering the Redemptorists at Witten, Germany, Duynstee completed his religious novitiate and publicly professed the evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty, and obedience, at 's-Hertogenbosch on May 28, 1909. After completing clerical studies, he was ordained a priest on October 7, 1913.
Duynstee's superiors planned to further his theological studies in Rome, but this plan was thwarted by the outbreak of the First World War. Nevertheless, his superiors appointed him to various apostolates and then in 1920, he was assigned to the Redemptorist Seminary at Witten.
Here, Duynstee came under the tutelage of his Redemptorist confrere, the published moral theologian Cornelius Damen (1881-1953).S J Boland CSsR, A Dictionary of the Redemptorist, Romae Collegium S. Alfonsi de Urbe, 1987; p. 58, 101.) Duynstee cooperated with Damen during completion of the 1932 ninth revised edition of the moral text by Jozef Aertnys's (1828-1915), Theologia moralis secundum doctrinam S. Alphonsi Liguori, which was first published in 1886."Boland, 1987, p. 4, 58, 101" Aertnys’ text originally updated Alphonsus di Liguori's (1696-1787), four volume Moral Theology: Theologia Moralis.Alphonsus di Ligouri: Theologia Moralis, (Latin) Mechlin, 1852; Moral Theology, 1st English translation by Ryan Grant, Mediatrix Press, Port Falls, Idaho, 2017. Duynstee, among other sections, contributed the tract on Virtue to the Aertnys/Damen Four Volume Moral Manual for Priests.R.H.J. Ter Meulen, "Ziel en Zaligheid De receptie van de psychologie en van de psychoanalyse onder de katholieken in Nederland 1900-1965" Radboud Repository of the Radboud University (Nijmegen: Ambo Press, October 13, 1988): Displacement Theory, 3.2.1., 78.
(I.e., "The Soul and Salvation of the Reception of Psychology and Psychoanalysis among Catholics in the Netherlands 1900-1965"). Doctoral Thesis Confirmed (Nijmegen 1988): accessed February 24, 2016, https://www.persee.fr/doc/assr_0335-5985_1989_num_68_2_1412_t1_0299_0000_3.
Duynstee succeeded Damen as seminary professor in the disciplines of moral, ascetical, and mystical theology from 1921 to 1927. Later, he was appointed to teach moral theology to all the Redemptorist students in the Dutch Province. Duynstee was an erudite legalist and moralist of the Alphonsian tradition.
Duynstee was appointed first rector of the newly built St. Joseph's retreat house in Zenderen, Overijssel, which was established by the Dutch Province on July 27, 1927.“Boland 1987”, p. 428 Duynstee was also the first rector of that Redemptorist Community. One year on, Duynstee was nominated as a professor at the Catholic University of Nijmegen and was appointed to the Faculty of Law. He lectured in criminal law and procedural justice, holding all these offices concurrently.
The Redemptorist Order requires a spirit of self-sacrifice for the salvation of others. True to this spirit, Duynstee weathered the many calumnies, difficulties, contradictions, persecutions, and misunderstandings he experienced during the last three decades of his life. Apostolically, Redemptorist priests and brothers ‘are essentially a missionary society... According to their rule they are "to strive to imitate the virtues and examples of Jesus Christ, the Redeemer, consecrating themselves especially to the preaching of the word of God to the poor.”Constitution of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (i.e., the Rule), see Apostolate. And "Redemptorists". Catholic Encyclopedia, contributed by J. Wuest. Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). New York: Robert Appleton Company.
Consecrated life in the Dutch Church was known to be arduous. In the early decades of the 20th Century, long-suffering religious orders were overly strict partly due to the rigorous tendencies of Jansenism. Catholic Devotions to the Sacred Heart of Jesus had mitigated Jansenist tendencies. . In 1965, the Vatican Council II went further by producing the document, Perfectae CaritatisPerfectae Caritatis, the Decree on the Adaptation and Renewal of Religious Life, Vatican Council II Documents, Rome, 1963. releasing many religious from the remnants of Jansenism via modern adaptations to the consecrated life. Meanwhile, Redemptorist priests were formed in the distinctive Alphonsian Æquiprobabilism, moderating issues of probabilism, probabiliorism, rigorism, and laxism.Stefan Gillies, ‘Saint Alphonsus – Jansenism – Moral Theology’ https://stefangillies.wordpress.com/saint-alphonsus-jansenism-moral-theology/
Such theological teachings prepared Duynstee for his unique and prophetic psychological insights.See Rudolf Joseph Hubertus Ter Meulen, “Ziel en Zaligheid De receptie van de psychologie en van de psychoanalyse onder de katholieken in Nederland 1900-1965.” Repository of the Radboud University (Nijmegen: Ambo Press, 1988), 3.2.1., p. 78. The condition of erring by a defective excessive control, and its opposite an excessive defectiveness are two sides of the same coin found in emotionally repressed persons.Ryan (2017), 2.4.1. They err emotionally either by a repressive sexual anorexia,Patrick Carnes and Joseph M Moriarity, Sexual Anorexia, Hazelden Publishing, Minnesota, 1997 or by being out of control with the symptoms of an emotional obsessive and compulsive disorder or even sexual addiction.Patrick Carnes, Don’t Call It Love, Bantam Books, New York, 1991. Virtue is in the temperate mean between excessive control and deficient moral recklessness. ‘In morals, vices are opposed to one another and to virtue in respect of excess and deficiency.’.Thomas Aquinas ST II-II, q.119, a.1
Duynstee had many supporters, but he also had critics. Following a dispute with other religious authorities over his teachings, he was removed from his University Chair in 1956. Later, from March 1957 to December 1960, the Vatican had Duynstee's superiors exile him to Italy. After this exile was withdrawn, he returned to the Netherlands. At that time his local superior Fr VeZen, an ex-student of Duynstee, cherished the hope of gathering several of Duynstee's best articles and publishing them in a single readily accessible text. The fruit of his labors was the book, Verspreide Opstellen (“Scattered Writings”),WJAJ Duynstee, Verspreide Opstellen, JJ Romen & Zonen, Uitgevers, Roermond Maaseik, 1963. which marked Duynstee's fiftieth anniversary of ordination to the priesthood. With the passing of Duynstee's persecution and just after returning from Italy, PJA Calon wrote the following affirmation in the Introduction of Verspreide Opstellen, ‘Fr Duynstee never spoke at length nor were his teachings wide-ranging, but everything to which he directed his mind, he penetrated to the core and presented insights, which often opened to others entirely new perspectives.’"Opstellen 1963", Ten geleide (i.e., Introduction), Prof Dr PJA Calon, p. 6. Van Eek said about Duynstee: ‘what he has written has lasting value.’"Opstellen 1963", p. 6.
Priestly accomplishments
As a consecrated religious and priest, Duynstee was devoted to the Redemptorist's apostolic mission. Duynstee was adept in focusing his clerical ministry to the service of others in varying ways, including lecturing, providing parish missions, and retreat work, as well as being a spiritual director and confessor to many on the Nijmegen University campus. He was especially active in fostering and nurturing young laity, priestly vocations, seminarians, and helping fellow priests. At Witten, Duynstee gave spiritual direction and guidance to the students as the prefect of seminarians. Indeed, the pastoral care of clerical students was of particular interest to him his entire life.