In the examination of philosophy and science, as in other disciplines, Catholic censorship did not develop separate formal criteria to inventory, label, and evaluate possibly heterodox opinions. Psychology, however, was one of the very few disciplinary areas of natural philosophy where the orthodoxy of texts or propositions could be tested with the help of the same scriptural traditions of Christianity as theology. In their investigations, the Roman censors were guided by Bible texts, Council decrees, by bulls and edicts of popes and bishops, by authoritative views of the Fathers and of medieval and later schoolmen, by ancient, medieval, and contemporary repertoria of heretical views, and finally by medieval and early modern inquisitorial manuals.

In the rhetoric and imagery of the early modern Catholic bodies of doctrinal control, the presence of dissent was frequently framed as a threat to the identity and purity of faith, especially in an area that, involving the essential nature of the human soul, went straight to the heart of the Church's pastoral concerns. Thus, doctrinal deviation was most literally depicted with strong medical and biological imagery (plague, disease, sickness, infection). The battle was also fought with doctrinal conceptions imbued with an equally strong rhetorical value. To deter actual and possible followers of heterodox views, the latter were frequently qualified with the labels of ancient and medieval heresies.