The Dignity Beneath the Diagnosis: Understanding Clients Through the Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person

Every counselor already carries a picture of the human person into the room, whether or not they have ever named it. This short course helps you make that picture explicit, accurate, and whole.

Drawn from Divine Mercy University’s Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person, the lesson gives you a “model of models”: a large frame that sits underneath the particular theories you already use and keeps the whole person in view. You will learn to hold two truths at once — that a client’s disorder is real, and that their dignity is real and cannot be lost — and to let that stereo vision shape how you assess, relate, and plan. Presented by Dr. Craig Titus and Dr. Harvey Payne, the lesson walks through five ways of seeing a client: as created in the image of God, as a personal unity, as fundamentally relational, as fulfilled through vocation, and as growing in virtue. The through-line is practical rather than pious: the most complete and accurate understanding of the person makes for the best care, for believing and non-believing clients alike.