Who Is O. Hobart Mowrer and Why Does He Matter to Biblical Counselors? 

Greg Gifford is Chair of Biblical Studies and Assistant Professor of Biblical Counseling at The Master’s University. In a post at the Biblical Counseling Coalition (Jay Adams’ Heritage: How Jay Adams Is Connected to the Father of American Psychology), Gifford summarizes who O. Hobart Mowrer was, and why he is important to modern biblical counselors.

“O.H. Mowrer was an American psychologist and professor of psychology at the University of Illinois who lived from 1907 to 1982. He is known for behavior therapy and two-stage theory, something that had great significance in the ministry of Jay Adams. Mowrer was a man who was willing to challenge the status quo of then-modern psychological practices, much like Adams. Mowrer was one who did not see eye-to-eye with his behavioristic predecessors and was willing to publicly challenge and critique them—something that Adams appreciated in Mowrer.”

For more on the life and work of Mowrer, see The Curious Career of O. Hobart Mowrer by Corbin Page.

Jay Adams and O. Hobart Mowrer  

In the summer of 1965, Jay Adams applied to a six-week intensive fellowship program for clergy sponsored by the Eli Lilly Foundation, and run by Mowrer. Accepted into the program, Adams and the other five trainees “virtually lived with Mowrer,” spending their days working in therapy groups that Mowrer conducted in state mental health hospitals in Galesburg and Kankakee, Illinois (Powlison, The Biblical Counseling Movement: History and Context, 35).

That summer with Mowrer was eye-opening for Adams. He watched Mowrer confront his counselees about their actions, urge them to take responsibility, and not hide behind psychological labels (Institute for Nouthetic Studies. “Dr. Jay E. Adams,” January 2021. Accessed online May 26, 2023).

As Adams described it,

“Mowrer was rough on people in the psychiatric hospital. He would tackle the impossible cases, and in groups he would go after someone relentlessly until a breakthrough occurred” (Powlison, The Biblical Counseling Movement: History and Context, 36).

Adams summarized the significant impact of his time with Mowrer.

“I learned much during that time, and while today I certainly would not classify myself as a member of Mowrer’s school, I feel that the summer program was a turning point in my thinking” Adams, Competent to Counsel, xv, emphasis added).

Adams said much about Mowrer’s influence on his thinking about nouthetic counseling:

“I read some of Mowrer’s works, including The Crisis in Psychiatry and Religion, and The New Group Therapy, which he had just published. These books astounded me. Mowrer had gone far beyond my own thinking. He was flatly challenging the very existence of institutionalized psychiatry. He stated outright that the current psychiatric dogmas were false.…”

“Reading Mowrer’s book, The Crisis in Psychiatry and Religion, as I said, was an earth-shattering experience.…”

“From my protracted involvement with the inmates of the mental institutions at Kankakee and Galesburg [where Adams’s spent six weeks, 24/7, studying under Mowrer], I was convinced that most of them were there, as I said, not because they were sick, but because they were sinful.…”

“I came home deeply indebted to Mowrer for indirectly driving me to a conclusion that I as a Christian minister should have known all along, namely, that many of the ‘mentally ill’ are people who can be helped by the ministry of God’s Word” (Competent to Counsel, xiv-xviii, emphasis added).

Motivated by Adams 

Adams’s comments about Mowrer’s catalytic influence on him have motivated me to do primary source reading in Mowrer’s theory and methodology of counseling. So far, I have over 400 pages of single-spaced research notes. Today’s post is a small slice of that research.

In today’s post, I’ll address two questions:

• What was Mowrer’s model—what did he believe and practice?
• How did Mowrer’s model influence Jay Adams’s nouthetic counseling model?

Mowrer’s Theology of Psychiatry and Christianity

Mowrer was not only a secular psychologist. He saw himself also as a secular theology—pontificating about psychiatry and Christianity. In today’s post, I’m focusing on the primary book where Mowrer declares his beliefs: The Crisis in Psychiatry and Religion, originally published in 1961.

I’m highlighting this book specifically because of Adams’s statements that this book “astounded” him, and that reading it was “an earth-shattering experience.” For me, rather than earth-shattering, it has been an eye-opening experience reading The Crisis in Psychiatry and Religion firsthand.

Based upon Adams’s glowing praise for how the book impacted his thinking about counseling, I expected a very different book.

I do, of course, understand the concept of common grace where God sovereignly shepherds everything, even the mind of an unregenerate person. I do, of course, understand the impact of regeneration, where God sovereignly shepherds the mind of the redeemed believer so that the Christian can discern possibly helpful aspects of the writings of unsaved persons.

However, The Crisis in Psychiatry and Religion is so filled with anti-Christian thinking, that I was hard-pressed to discern any redeemable aspects. While Mowrer’s title includes “Religion,” the book focuses on Mowrer’s secular understanding of the crisis in and errors of Reformed Protestant Christianity. In no way did Mowrer’s understanding of Christianity resonate with me.

Additionally, in no way did Mowrer’s Christless understanding of moral responsibility resonate with me. Mowrer built every aspect of his call to personal responsibility on human effort, self-salvation, and confession to oneself (not confession to Christ).

I’ve come to label Mowrer’s approach:

Man-Made, Man-Centered Secular Moral Behavioral Psychology. 

Or, a bit longer label:

A Man-Made, Man-Centered Model of Secular Moral Behavioral Psychology: Mandated Confession and Admonished Self-Atonement. 

Or, shorter:

Secular Nouthetic Counseling. 

Let’s allow Mowrer’s own words to speak for him.

Mowrer and Freud 

Mowrer critiqued Freudian psychoanalysis as ignoring true guilt. Mowrer disagreed with Freud’s assessment that neurosis and psychosis were caused by repressed false guilt that needed to be treated by insight and awareness so the person could escape from religion’s false guilt and society’s false moralism.

Adams often quoted Mowrer’s now famous words regarding Freud and Christianity.

“Has evangelical religion sold its birthright for a mess of psychological pottage?”

The “psychological pottage,” according to Mowrer, was Freud’s focus on false guilt which Mowrer said led to blame shifting. “Psychological truth,” for Mowrer, demanded a focus on true guilt and moral responsibility. Mowrer viewed everything through the lens of the suppression of real guilt.

Clearly, Mowrer was anti-Freudian psychoanalysis. And clearly, as quoted above, Adams resonated with Mowrer’s perspective on Freud, and with Mowrer’s perspective on moral responsibility.

Mowrer and Christianity 

What we often don’t hear is what Mowrer believed and taught instead of Freudianism. What we don’t hear is what Mowrer taught about Protestant Christianity.

We need a biblical evaluation of Mowrer’s secular behavioral model. We need to ask:

How does Mowrer define true guilt, moral responsibility, and the suppression of real guilt?

How does Mowrer’s anti-Christian, secular, works-based behavioral model seek to confront the suppression of guilt and seek to empower people toward moral responsibility?

Some summaries of Mowrer’s “secular theology” will help us to evaluate Mowrer’s self-salvation model of “behavioral responsibility”:

• Mowrer taught that psychoanalysis was justification by insight—and that this was unhelpful because it denied the reality of real guilt and actual sin.
• Mowrer taught that Protestant Christianity was justification by faith—and that this was the wrong way to deal with real guilt and sin. Mowrer identified confession to God in the hopes of Divine forgiveness as “cheap grace.” Man had to do something to atone for his sin.
• Mowrer’s man-centered, man-dependent model for dealing with guilt was justification by works—and he falsely claimed this was the right way to deal with guilt and atone for sin.

Specifically related to Reformed Christianity:

• Mowrer saw Reformed Calvinistic Protestant teaching as equally as wrong and harmful as Freudian psychology.
• Mowrer said that justification by grace alone through faith alone was complicit in causing the rise of mental illness!
• Mowrer rejected Paul’s New Testament writings because of Paul’s teaching on salvation by grace through faith.
• Mowrer spoke positively of James, and he claimed that it taught salvation by works.
• Mowrer aligned somewhat with the Catholic approach to confession and penance, as well as with the Mormon approach to confession and works. However, Mowrer did not see those religious approaches as going far enough. 

Crisis in Psychiatry AND Religion 

Think about the title of Mowrer’s book: Crisis in Psychiatry and Religion. According to Mowrer:

• The crisis in psychiatry was Freud’s doctrine of imagined guilt that resulted in diminishing human responsibility.
• The crisis in religion was the Reformation doctrine of salvation by grace that, according to Mowrer, resulted in diminishing human ability for dealing with true guilt!

As Corbin Page notes:

“Psychologists were not the only targets of Mowrer’s ire. He also expressed a strong dislike of John Calvin, believing that the Calvinist doctrine of predestination was nearly as debilitating as Freud’s determinism (Mowrer, 1961c, p. 159). The Apostle Paul was also labeled a pernicious influence. Mowrer believed that the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith was inferior to the doctrine of good works that he found in the book of James (Mowrer, 1961c, pp. 185–189). However, Mowrer did not offer theological arguments against either Calvin or Paul. Instead, he offered psychological arguments” (19).

Admonishing counselees toward moral responsibility was the bedrock of Mowrer’s methodology. Morality by works was the theological bedrock of Mowrer’s theory.

Mowrer’s theology was wrong. His methodology was equally wrong.

Mowrer in His Own Words: Christ’s Grace Is a “Heresy”! 

If you have not read Mowrer firsthand, then perhaps you have falsely been led to believe that the crisis in religion was that pastors were depending on Freud. That was only a minor part of Mowrer’s perspective.

Mowrer’s primary concern was that Protestants were relying on Luther, Calvin, grace, and faith! His primary solution insisted upon the need for human works to deal effectively with real guilt!

Here are just a few firsthand, primary source quotes from Mowrer in The Crisis in Psychiatry and Religion.

According to Mowrer, “…the Reformation, by its deficiencies and anomalies actually produced psychoanalysis” (156).

Mowrer tells us clearly that he wrote The Crisis in Psychiatry and Religion “…in revolt against the denial and debasement of human responsibility which have been foisted upon us alike by Calvinist theology and Freudian psychoanalysis…” (vi).

Mowrer double-downs on his contention that the biblical, Protestant doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone is the core problem of modern humanity.

“Grace, it was argued, is not dependent upon other men but comes from God alone. Therefore, you were to take your case to God, in prayer, and ask for his forgiveness directly, without priestly intervention…. This new provision for a short-cut to God and absolution was supposedly a great innovation, liberation, and triumph. But history may yet show that it was instead a grim and costly error. There can surely be no denying that, on the whole, Protestantism has handled the problem of guilt very badly. It has left its followers in a state which perhaps made them ‘creative’ and ‘ambitious’ in a feverish, unhealthy way; but it has also disposed us to the mass neurosis and pervasive anxiety which are so much a part of the modern scene” (106).

“I, personally, take my stand with the Apostle James and Deitrich Bonhoeffer, against the Apostle Paul and Martin Luther” (109).

“One is little short of dazzled by the possibilities that seem to lie before us if, for a change, we were to take guilt seriously and at the same time worked out ways of dealing with it which are more realistic and effective than those which have characterized Protestantism…” (128).

“Occasionally I have been invited to expatiate on the concept of Original Sin. If I allowed myself to do so, I would really lay myself open to the charge from theologians of practicing their profession without a license. But, for whatever it may be worth, my untutored layman’s opinion is that this doctrine [Original Sin] is nonsense, as is that of the Substitutionary Atonement, and has done much harm in the world” (147).

“They proclaim certain tenets of Protestant doctrine, particularly of a Calvinist stripe, from their pulpits, but seem completely unimpressed that this doctrine is not saving them, much less the persons to whom they ostensibly minister. They preach justification by faith and roundly condemn ‘good works,’ and seemingly take no account of how poorly this doctrine itself works, in the lives of modern men and women” (157-158).

Mowrer then summarizes his complete disdain for justification by grace alone through faith alone—calling it “perversity”!

“Calvinist Protestantism has said to us: ‘You are responsible for your redemption, but you are incapable of being equally responsible for your redemption. God condemns you for your evil, but He will pay no attention to your own efforts to redeem yourself and will Himself save you or not, according to His inscrutable pleasure.’ This, I submit, is a psychological and human absurdity and a Christian deviation and perversity” (160).

In fact, Mowrer labels Christ’s grace a “heresy”!

“The Calvinist doctrine of the guilt of man and the grace of God has been a heresy which has produced despair, anger, and madness” (181).

Mowrer summarizes his thesis on the last page of The Crisis in Psychiatry and Religion. Speaking of a person who “has had a nervous ‘breakdown,’” and has “lost his balance, become unstable…” Mowrer asks,

“What, now can a person in such a predicament do to be ‘saved’? It would appear that two equally misleading answers have been given to this question in our time. Protestant theology has preached a doctrine of ‘justification by faith.’ Place your trust in God and believe on Jesus Christ, we have been urged, and your sins will be immediately forgiven. And for those who prefer a ‘scientific’ rather than a ‘religious’ approach, there has been the doctrine of ‘justification by insight.’ In the latter approach, one comes to see that his sins are not real and that he doesn’t really need forgiveness. It is hard to determine which of these doctrines has been more pernicious” (231-232).

First Mowrer proclaims that justification by grace alone through faith alone is perversity, and then he calls it pernicious. The Crisis in Psychiatry and Religion astounded me—I was astounded by its blasphemy.

Recall that Mowrer asked,

Has evangelical religion sold its birthright for a mess of psychological pottage?

To anyone influenced by Mowrer’s behavioral psychology theories, we might ask:

Have you sold your evangelical birthright for a mess of secular self-salvation behavioral psychological pottage?

Mowrer’s Prescription: Works Righteousness     

As we examine Mowrer’s prescription, remember:

Mowrer’s theology was wrong. His methodology was equally wrong.

In Mowrer’s prescription for addressing true guilt and actual sin, he emphasized the self-atoning work of penance.

“For those who are now disillusioned regarding both of these easy ways to ‘salvation,’ it is beginning to appear that ‘the way’ is indeed hard and the gate narrow. Emotionally disturbed persons have not talked themselves into their difficulties, they have acted, misbehaved; and many are now persuaded that one likewise cannot talk (or pray) himself out of them. It is surely unrepentant and unredeemed evil actions that destroy our self-respect and moral credit; and one can hardly escape the conclusion that these cannot be recaptured by any means other than compensating good actions and deeds” (The Crisis in Psychiatry and Religion, 232).

Mowrer’s model of secular behavioral psychology emphasized the method of admonishing people to admit their true guilt to one another and then exhorting people to do specific works of restitution.

Mowrer’s treatment was a man-centered, grace-rejecting, secular, moralistic, behavioral psychology model. 

Mowrer believed in self-atonement as the way to handle guilt and sin.

Donald Krill, in a 1965 review, pointed out that Mowrer’s approach seemed more related to his own personality than to any well-thought-out system. Krill’s primary critique was theological. Mowrer, he wrote, “is describing essentially the religion of the Pharisees, one of rules, self-perfection, and social conformity” (Krill, 1965, pp. 30, 32; cited in Corbin Page, 22).

In summary:

• Mowrer believed that the concept of Christ’s atonement for our sin and guilt did not truly address sin and a guilty conscience. Instead, substitutionary atonement led to neurosis and psychosis.
• Mowrer saw confession to God as ineffectual.
• Mowrer insisted on confession to one another.
• Mowrer insisted on works of self-atonement, penance, and restitution as effectual to address sin and guilt. 

To anyone influenced by Mowrer’s behavioral psychology methods, we might ask:

Have you sold your evangelical birthright for a mess of secular self-salvation behavioral psychological pottage?

Mowrer’s Secular Psychological Model: Viewing Everything Through the Lens of Suppression of Sin 

Mowrer viewed life through the lens of suppression of sin. He viewed any attempt to label struggles as false guilt, or to label them as suffering, as a form of denial that led people to take on a victim mentality. This led Mowrer to see all mental illness, including schizophrenia, as due to suppression of sin and true guilt.

Mowrer’s focus on suppression of sin also led him to see victims of incest, not as victims, but as personally responsible and morally culpable. In one long case study, Mowrer addressed the treatment of a young woman who had been repeatedly sexually abused by her father when she was a child—incestuous rape. Mowrer chided a Freudian counselor for treating this woman as someone dealing with repressed false guilt.

What was Mowrer’s suggested treatment of this victim of incestuous rape? He said she needed to acknowledge and confess her guilt and sin of incestuous sex with her father when she was a child. In Mowrer’s mind, she was not a sufferer or victim of her father’s sin. Instead, she was a morally culpable sinner in the hands of her guilt-ridden conscience.

Mowrer’s “secular theology” left him blinded to a biblical theology of suffering. In Mowrer’s spiritual blindness, he saw a sinned against child as culpable for being sexually abused. Like Job’s miserable counselors, Mowrer was bereft of compassion for the sufferer, focused on sin-spotting, dedicated to admonishment and confrontation, committed to self-salvation, and oblivious to the God of all comfort. What caused Mowrer’s anti-grace model of counseling?

The Personal Genesis of Mowrer’s Psychological Suppression Theory  

Where did Mowrer’s “everything is repressed true guilt” approach originate? It found its genesis in Mowrer’s own personal experience of seeking to remedy his personal sense of a guilty conscience.

From Mowrer’s own testimony, he struggled with depression, neurosis, and psychosis off and on from his teen years and throughout his adult life until his death by suicide in 1982 at the age of seventy-five. Mowrer intimated that he struggled throughout his life with homosexual desires—and that this was the source of his real guilt.

His self-diagnosis? His efforts to suppress his guilt was the source of his depression and mental illnesses.

His self-cure? After one lengthy hospitalization in a mental institution, Mowrer finally confessed his homosexual urges (what today would be called same-sex attraction). This led to great psychological relief—temporarily.

Mowrer’s depression and mental illness returned, and he was again hospitalized. He then found greater relief in almost indiscriminate confession of his guilt to everyone who would listen.

Mowrer and his wife together started integrity groups as a method and model for encouraging troubled people to confess their sins to one another. Group members were mandated to confess their sins to each other and then admonished to de-habituate from their sin and relieve their true guilt by doing works of self-atonement, penance, and restitution.

Mowrer, Adams, and Us

Yes, O. Hobart Mowrer, was anti-Freud. Yes. He was pro-responsibility.

Yes. We can see where these views would resonate with Jay Adams.

O. Hobart Mowrer was also stridently anti-Christianity. Anti-grace. Anti-faith. Anti-sufferer. He was pro-works. Pro-self-atonement.

Obviously, Jay Adams disagreed with Mowrer’s anti-Christian theology of life. In Competent to Counsel, Adams states:

“Let me append one final word about Mowrer. I want to say clearly, once and for all, that I am not a disciple of Mowrer or William Glasser (a writer in the Mowrer tradition)…. I stand far off from them. . . .”

“Their presuppositional stance must be rejected totally. Christians may thank God that in his providence he has used Mowrer and others to awaken us to the fact that the “mentally ill” can be helped….”

“Biblical counseling cannot be an imposition of Mowrer’s or Glasser’s views (or mine) upon Scripture.”

Yet, Adams said that he was astonished by the earth-shattering experience of reading The Crisis in Psychiatry and Religion. He said he “came home deeply indebted to Mowrer” after spending a summer watching Mowrer confront people into moral responsibility.

Given those statements by Adams, and given primary source research about Mowrer, some pertinent questions arise for all of us:

1. To what extent might anti-Freud writings be useful for a biblical counselor, even as a catalyst, if those writings are embedded in a man-made, man-dependent, anti-grace, anti-faith, anti-Christ, secular, moral, behavioristic, humanistic, self-atonement psychology model?

2. How much does a foolish foundation impact every aspect of a person’s psychological perspective, and what cautions should this raise for us as biblical counselors if we were to seek to “redeem” something from such a model?

3. How much can we agree with, promote, and build upon Mowrer’s anti-psychology view and his pro-responsibility view when his foundational behavioral psychology views are anti-Christian?

4. How much of Mowrer’s model of admonishing and confronting people to be morally responsible can we receive when Mowrer builds his model on a total rejection of grace and faith, and a total acceptance of works and self-salvation?

5. How much concern should we have about the theology and methodology of a model that finds culpable a child sexually abused by her father?

6. How much concern should we have about a model that reflects more of Job’s counselors and less of the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort?

7. How much of Mowrer’s model of admonishing and confronting people toward behavioral responsibility should we receive when we realize that he built his model upon his personal need to alleviate his own guilt through human effort?

8. Even allowing for the work of God’s common grace in Mowrer, even allowing for the redeemed Christian’s regenerate mind being able to discern truth from error in Mowrer’s secular behavioral theory and methodology, specifically what is potentially redeemable in Mowrer’s Christless, grace-less, works-based approach?

9. If Adams could be astounded by Mowrer’s secular behavioral psychology model, if he could spend a summer training under the anti-Christian Mowrer, if he could be informed by Mowrer’s moral responsibility model, then how does that align with current criticism of clinically-informed biblical counselors who are informed by neuroscience research but assess it using God’s all-sufficient Word?

The Man Who Influenced Adams 

I wrestled with the best wording for the title of today’s post. Is “influenced” the best word? Would the word “impacted” be better…or worse? Perhaps “catalyzed” would be an appropriate word?

I chose “influenced,” in part, because of Adams’s own descriptions (see above) of his response to his engagement with Mowrer’s writings and to his experience of learning directly at the feet of Mowrer as Mowrer used his secular behavioral psychology model to admonish, confront, and counsel others.

The questions then become:

In what ways did Mowrer “influence” Adams as he created his nouthetic model of confrontation?

To what extent did Mowrer “influence” Adams in his development of his nouthetic confrontation approach?

In the rest of this post, I’ll share the assessment of others regarding how Mowrer may have influenced Adams. We’ll briefly hear from seven authors: Greg Gifford, David Powlison, George Schwab, Ed Welch, Heath Lambert, Mike Firmin, and Corbin Page.

Greg Gifford on Adams and Mowrer  

In Gifford’s Biblical Counseling Coalition post on Adams and Mowrer, in a section entitled, Mowrer’s Relationship and Influence on Jay Adams, Gifford writes: 

“While Mowrer was teaching at the University of Illinois, Jay Adams corresponded with him and eventually spent a summer studying under Mowrer in 1965. During this time, Adams said, ‘This was an unforgettable experience for which I shall always be grateful.’ Although Mowrer was not a believer, Adams found that Mowrer’s challenge of mental illness, call for personal responsibility, understanding of the medical model of counseling, and introduction of moral problems being termed as sin to be refreshing.

Through this exposure to Mowrer, Jay Adams was provided with the impetus that he needed to launch his articulation of what Scripture said about counseling and how Mowrer’s disagreement with counseling was partially correct, but yet still unbiblical. Mowrer was not the only influence regarding Jay Adams’s theory of counseling, but he was one of the most direct influences as seen in the above comments.

After this teaching experience with Mowrer, Adams began his work in writing Competent to Counsel, which would be published just five years later in 1970. It was a landmark work that helped solidify Jay Adams’s emphasis on directive counseling, human responsibility, and—of course—what he would term ‘nouthetic confrontation.’ Jay Adams was influenced by William James’s student—O.H. Mowrer—and that contrasting exposure helped Adams formulate what we now understand to be ‘biblical counseling.”

Gifford goes even further, highlighting a chart (“Figure 1”) that traces additional behavioral psychology influences upon Adams. Gifford writes:

“Beginning with William James in Figure 1, one can see the progression of his influence to Clark Hull. Note, O.H. Mowrer would have studied under Clark Hull, and Clark Hull was directly influenced by the writing and thinking of William James. William James influenced Clark Hull, who influenced O.H. Mowrer. Furthermore, of great significance for biblical counseling, Jay Adams studied directly under Mowrer and credits him for much of his counseling theory and practice. As seen in Figure 1, William James’s influence did have an impact on Hull, Mowrer, and eventually, Adams.”

David Powlison on Adams and Mowrer  

David Powlison, in The Biblical Counseling Movement: History and Context, summarizes the influence of Mowrer on Adams.

“Mowrer’s moral framework, conversional intent, direct manner, and polemic against the dominant models dovetailed with many of Adams’s existing commitments, discontents, successes, failures, and gropings.

Mowrer had given Adams the contours of a counseling model and had set him in motion.

During 1965-66, Adams began implementing what he had learned from Mowrer and what he was discovering in the Bible. He did counseling in his own church, experimenting with more intentional probing of counselee’s lives and more directive methods of addressing the problems discovered” (36, 37).

Writing specifically about the impact of Adams’s six weeks with Mowrer, Powlison describes why Mowrer’s approach resonated with Adams.

“Mowrer’s counseling methodology was a revelation to an authoritative pulpit proclaimer. Adams had chafed at the passivity, patience, and professional reserve enjoined by the reigning counseling authorities…. Mowrer was direct and directive…. Mowrer aimed to identity and solve problems quickly…. Mowrer was assertive, no-nonsense, and dealt practically with objectively discoverable failings” (35-36, emphasis added).

In a 1988 article, “Crucial Issues in Contemporary Biblical Counseling,” Powlison addresses six areas that demanded attention in Adams’s nouthetic counseling. Primary among these were the secular behavioristic aspects of Adams’s approach.

“We depart from the Bible if we ignore motives and drift towards an externalist view of man. The caricature that we are ‘behavioristic’ indeed may be true more often than we would like to admit” (Powlison, “Crucial Issues in Contemporary Biblical Counseling,” The Journal of Pastoral Practice, Vol 9, No 3, 1988, 56, emphasis added).

We saw how Mowrer’s behavioral responsibility model incapacitated him to deal with suffering compassionately. Powlison notes that Adams’s nouthetic accountability model encompassed deficiency in theory and practice.

“I suspect that at times we simply have been deficient in our counseling worldview; we have been sub-biblical in the name of being biblical. Would anyone deny that ‘nouthetic’ counseling practice often has been less than biblical in its sensitivity to suffering people?” (The Biblical Counseling Movement: History and Context, 248).

Powlison also describes similarities between the problems we identified in Mowrer’s combative, confrontational approach and issues in Adams’s nouthetic confrontation model.

“How many counselees have been needlessly confronted—perhaps even put on the defensive—when they would have confronted themselves if a probing and inviting question had been asked?” (The Biblical Counseling Movement: History and Context, 252).

George Schwab on Adams and Mowrer  

In 2003, The Journal of Biblical Counseling published an article by George M. Schwab (Ph.D. Old Testament Professor at Erskine Theological Seminary) entitled, “Critique of ‘Habituation’ as a Biblical Model of Change.” In the article, Schwab declares that Adams’s conceptual ideas on habit came from secular sources—Mowrer and Glasser.

“The stimulus for Jay Adams’s theory of habit also came from outside the Bible. Adams admits that what radicalized him—what set him free from Rogers and Freud—was the influence of particular secular psychologists, O. Hobart Mowrer and William Glasser.

Schwab also examines Adams’s exegetical work related to the concept of habituation, arguing that Adams derived his views on habituation not from Scripture, but from secular psychology.

However, Adams claims that the Bible is sufficient for counseling, and that all so-called psychological insights must stand the test of Scripture. Yet, some of his ‘Bible-based’ theories and emphases seem almost identical to those of his secular predecessors. Was part of the ‘grid’ through which Adams reads the Bible supplied by these secularists? Is this why some strands of Adams’s work sound so cognate to secular writings?” (68, emphasis added).

Schwab then clearly states that Adams developed his behavioral approach to habituation from secular sources.

“In what follows, I will first show the similarities between Jay Adams and his secular contemporaries. Adams originally adopted his view of ‘habit’ from secular psychological models and then worked it into a more or less biblical framework. This raises the question of how much influence the secular movement has had upon Adams’s approach to the Bible. Second, I will explore whether his view of habituation does justice to the Bible. Finally, I will draw some conclusions about the implications this study has for the biblical counseling movement, while illustrating the functioning of the hermeneutical spiral” (68, emphasis added).

“In what follows, I will first show the similarities between Jay Adams and his secular contemporaries. Adams originally adopted his view of ‘habit’ from secular psychological models and then worked it into a more or less biblical framework. This raises the question of how much influence the secular movement has had upon Adams’s approach to the Bible. Second, I will explore whether his view of habituation does justice to the Bible. Finally, I will draw some conclusions about the implications this study has for the biblical counseling movement, while illustrating the functioning of the hermeneutical spiral” (68, emphasis added).

At the end of his article, Schwab summarizes his assessment. His evaluation is that Adams took the insights of Mowrer and Glasser and:

“…then reworked them into a formal theory that was informed by Christian doctrine, particularly certain aspects of the doctrine of man. ‘Responsibility’ was corrected to be with respect to God; the confrontational approach became the ministry of ‘nouthesia’; habit became ‘manner of life’ lived before God; and habituation became the ‘put on, put off’ dynamic in the power of the Holy Spirit. This explicit borrowing and partial reworking is particularly the case with the object of our inquiry, ‘habituation’ (82, emphasis added).

Ed Welch on Adams and Mowrer  

In 2002, Ed Welch addressed the origin of Adams’s model of the “flesh,” arguing that rather than coming from Scripture, Adams derived it from the secular behavioristic model of his day (see, “How Theology Shapes Ministry: Jay Adams’s View of the Flesh and an Alternative,” The Journal of Biblical Counseling, 20, no. 3 (2002): 16-25).

After documenting the lack of biblical, theological, and lexical support for Adams’s view of the “flesh,” Welch then explains how Adams’s unbiblical view led to a behavioral model of care, rather than a biblical one.

“Counseling will be similar to a consultation with a behaviorist. It will be a step-by-step, somewhat mechanical process. It will be a problem-solving task. Motivations will not be the target for change; overt behaviors will.

Adams has often been accused of sounding like a Christian behaviorist. His view of the flesh is one theological commitment that leaves him vulnerable to such charges. The language of reprogramming, the emphasis on practice, the lack of a robust model of the inner life have analogies to present day behavioral and cognitive-behavioral approaches” (22-23, emphasis added).

Heath Lambert on Adams and Mowrer 

Heath Lambert, in his dissertation, The Theological Development of the Biblical Counseling Movement from 1988, affirms that George Schwab and Ed Welch demonstrated the secular genesis of Adams’s theory of habituation and the body.

“So then Schwab and Welch each agree that Adams’s model of habituation is unbiblical. In addition to this, Schwab establishes that the origins of Adams’s thinking were found in secular psychological theories, not in specific texts of Scripture. In other words, Schwab shows that the problem—cited by Welch—of Adams’s understanding of the term ‘flesh’ was imposed by Adams on the biblical text, and actually derived from the influence of unbelieving people” (73-74, emphasis added).

Lambert continues,

“Schwab agrees with Welch’s view here but additionally shows that Adams’s view on habituation was not developed from an exegesis of specific passages of Scripture. Schwab says, Adams’s theory that our moral habits (either faith or unbelief; either sins or love) operate according to habituation dynamics is not actually substantiated in any of his citations” (72-73).

Lambert then writes,

“Schwab’s statement that Adams’s views did not come from Scripture is a strong charge. It raises questions regarding the true origins of Adams’s motivational theory. In order to address these issues Schwab includes a discussion of where Adams’s assumption was developed arguing that it came from the influence of William Glasser and O. Hobart Mowrer” (73).

Lambert himself identifies Mowrer’s significant contribution to the core aspect of Adams’s behavioral habituation model of nouthetic counseling:

“Adams’s work underlines the important biblical truth of man as a responsible sinner. This truth is of critical importance in a counseling context that sought (and still generally seeks) to avoid assigning moral responsibility to the counselee for problems…. Mowrer’s emphasis on responsibility awakened Adams to this crucial reality” (65, emphasis added).

Mike Firmin on Adams and Mowrer

Mike Firmin, in his 1988 Ph.D. dissertation for Bob Jones University, Behaviorism and the Nouthetic Counseling Model of Jay E. Adams, speaking of Adams’s first two works, notes:

“The most influential psychological paradigm at the time of these two works was behavioral psychology. The year after Adams’s first publication, the American Psychological Association recognized B. F. Skinner, the famed behavioralist, as the most influential living psychologist. Moreover, with Adams having studied under the behavioral psychologist O. Hobart Mowrer, it is important to examine his model to discern whether the behavioral outlook influenced Adams’s perspective of what constitutes a biblical model of counseling” (2-3).

Fermin connects Adams’s admiration for Mowrer to how popular Mowrer was with theological conservatives in the 1960s.

Adam’s respect “is consistent with the respect shown by other theological conservatives. For example, one study released in 1969, which was one year previous to Adams’ first book, revealed the following regarding the conservative perspective: ‘Favoring Mowrer’s position most were clergyman from the more theologically conservative denominations.’ Adams’ writings must be viewed in light of the era in which he wrote them, and the influencing factors of his day” (227).

Firmin concludes that there is a “bent” toward a secular behavioral emphasis in Adams’s writings. “Examination of Adams’ model shows that it demonstrates a behavioral focus” (242).

Fermin sought to document his contention by examining a dozen core aspects of behavioral psychology’s theory and practice, and comparing them to Jay Adams’s nouthetic counseling theory and practice. For nearly twenty-five pages of his dissertation (242-265), Fermin details what he sees as overlap between Adams’s nouthetic model and Skinner and Mowrer’s behaviorism.

If Firmin used today’s language, he might have said that Adams practiced:

Behaviorism-Informed Nouthetic Counseling. Or, he might have written that Adams practiced Mowrer-Informed Morality Counseling.

Corbin Page on Adams and Mowrer

Reflecting on Mowrer and the birth of the modern nouthetic counseling movement, Corbin Page writes,

“The biblical counseling movement represented the culmination of the earlier conservative distrust of psychoanalysis and clinical psychology. Now the conservatives had an organized response rather than mere complaints. It was the fulfillment of Mowrer’s vision of treating mental disorders with the Bible rather than psychological concepts. Ironically, this response, which stressed that psychologists had no special authority, had its origins in the writings of one of the most eminent secular psychologists of the 20^th century” (22, emphasis added).

Additional Influences 

For additional insights into influences on Jay Adams and the modern nouthetic counseling movement, see, INC: Informed Nouthetic Counseling. There you’ll read about how nouthetic counseling has always been:

1. BINC: Behaviorism-Informed Nouthetic Counseling
2. NINC: Neuroscience-Informed Nouthetic Counseling
3. SINC: Science-Informed Nouthetic Counseling
4. PINC: Psychology-Informed Nouthetic Counseling
5. CGINC: Common Grace-Informed Nouthetic Counseling
6. CBRINC: Co-Belligerent-Research-Informed Nouthetic Counseling

Mowrer and Adams 

Each of us has to decide for ourselves to what extent we believe Mowrer might have influenced Jay Adams as he developed the modern nouthetic counseling movement. We also need to decide to what extent it might be appropriate or inappropriate to incorporate Mowrer’s approach, given his staunchly anti-Christian views.

This post allows you to make those assessments by: 1.) Alerting you to Mowrer’s views. 2.) Documenting what Adams said about Mowrer: both positive and negative. 3.)Summarizing what others have said about Mowrer’s potential influence on Adams.