Psychology and Sin

We psychologists." Mowrer said, ""have largely followed the Freudian doctrine that human beings become emotionally disturbed, not because of their having done anything palpably wrong, but because they instead lack insight. We have set out to oppose the forces of repression and to work for understanding. [This leads to] the discovery that the patient or client has been, in effect, too good, that he has within him impulses. especially those of lust and hostility, which he has been unnecessarily inhibiting. And health, we tell him, lies in recognizing and expressing these impulses. As a result, not only have we disavowed the connection between manifest misconduct and psychopathology, we have also very largely abandoned belief in right and wrong, virtue and sin.' The idea that man can have the benefits of an orderly social life, without paying for it through restraints and sacrifices, is ‘a subversive doctrine.’