Mere Christianity -- Book 3, Chap. 4

Morality and Psychoanalysis

In chap. 3, Lewis discusses what a Christian society would look like, but then adds that it would not be possible to create such a society until most of us became Christians first.  So which one should we begin to work on, Lewis asks, making a Christian society or making Christian individuals?  What should be our priority?

We must do both at the same time:

1.  the job of seeing how "Do as you would be done by" can be applied in detail to modern society,

2.  the job of becoming the sort of people who really would apply it if we saw how.

So what would the Christian idea of a good man (the Christian specification for the human machine) be like?  And if Christian morality is the blueprint to putting the human machine right, how would it be related to another approach, psychoanalysis?

Psychoanalysis is defined as "a method of analyzing psychic phenomena and treating emotional disorders that emphasizes the importance of the patient's talking freely about himself while under treatment and esp. about early childhood experiences and about his dreams."

In order to discuss psychoanalysis correctly, you must be sure to distinguish between the science of psychoanalysis (medical theories and technique) and the philosophical worldview of some who practice psychology (e.g., like Freud, Jung, etc.).  

When Freud is talking about how to cure neurotics he is speaking as a specialist on his own subject, but when he goes on to talk general philosophy he is speaking as an amateur.

God grants common grace insights to atheistic doctors.

We must make these important distinctions at the outset so that we might see that psychoanalysis, as a science, is in no way contradictory to Christianity.  Rather, we must appreciate both where its technique may overlap with Christianity at some points and where it may differ.

When a man makes a moral choice two things are involved:  the act of choosing and the various feelings or impulses (the raw materials upon which the choice is made).  Those feelings may be normal (which are common to all men) or they may be unnatural (due to something which has gone wrong at the subconscious level). 

Thus fear of things that are really dangerous [e.g. wild lions or tigers] would be an example of the first kind:  an irrational fear of cats or spiders would be an example of the second kind.  The desire of a man for a woman would be the first kind:  the perverted desire of a man for a man would be of the second.

The Task of Psychoanalysis is "to remove the abnormal feelings, that is, to give the man better raw material for his acts of choice."  The psychoanalyst seeks to cure the man of his irrational feelings so that he can respond normally in making moral choices.

Morality is "concerned with the acts of choice themselves."  Morality deals with "the real, free choice of the man, on material presented to him, either to put his own advantage first or to put it last.  And this free choice is the only thing that morality is concerned with."

The "bad psychological material is not a sin but a disease.  It does not need to be repented of, but to be cured." 

For instance a man may be sitting inside his car outside a bank that is being robbed.  But he is in a cast with a broken leg and can't do anything about it.

But suppose he is well, he then has to make the moral choice about whether or not to help those inside the bank who are in need.

The task of the psychologist or psychiatrist corresponds to the bone surgeon who sets the leg so that it heals.  The psyche of a depressed person may be so affected that all reality is viewed through a gray filter and a will that would normally be committed to doing good is immobilized.  The psychologist seeks to help the person return to "normalcy" so that he can make rational decisions again.  But at this point, the person still needs morality to help him choose which act is good and which is bad.

It is this limit upon psychology that must be maintained.  Psychotherapists is not a substitute for moral theology but a supplement to it.  Morality and psychotherapy may be joined, but not confused.  Health is not the same as holiness.

1.  But that is why it is very important that we seek to fix these psychological problems so that we can make right moral choices.  We are so often focused on outward, external actions while God is more concerned about our moral (internal) choices.

This means that:

When a man who has been perverted from his youth and taught that cruelty is the right thing, does some tiny little kindness, or refrains from some cruelty he might have committed, and thereby, perhaps, risks being sneered at by his companions, he may, in God's eyes, be doing more than you and I would do if we gave up life itself for a friend.

Also,

Some of us who seem quite nice people may, in fact, have made so little use of a good heredity and a good upbringing that we are really worse than those whom we regard as friends.  Can we be quite certain how we should have behaved if we had been saddled with the psychological outfit, and then with the bad upbringing, and then with the power, say, of Himmler?

This is why we are not suppose to judge others as Christians. 

We see only the results which a man's choices make out of his raw material.  But God does not judge him on the raw material at all, but on what he has done with it.

It is only in the afterlife, when the externals are finally removed, that we will see, and be seen, what we all truly are made of:

Most of man's psychological makeup is probably due to his body:  when his body dies all that will fall off him, and the real central man, the thing that chose, that made the best or the worst out of this material, will stand naked.  All sorts of nice things which we thought our own, but which were really due to a good digestion, will fall off some of us:  all sorts of nasty things which were due to complexes or bad health will fall off others.  We shall then, for the first time, see every one as he really was.  There will be surprises.

2.  People often think of morality as a kind of bargaining with God who says that if we keep all his rules then he'll send us to Heaven, but if we don't he'll send us to Hell.  But that is not the best way of thinking about morality at all.

Rather, morality has to do with each of the thousands of choices we make everyday.  Each time you make even one little choice you are becoming a little different from what you were before.  Each choice is transforming the center or core of your being in either a heavenly creature or a hellish creature. 

I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before.  And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all you life long you are slowly turning this central thing into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature.

You are either moving closer to God or further away from God.  The former creature consists of "joy, peace, knowledge, and power."  The latter of "madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness."  "Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other."

This is why the great Christian thinkers and writers are normally more concerned with our inner thoughts and choices than with the actual external sins that are produced. 

What they are always thinking of is the mark which the action leaves on that tiny central self which no one sees in this life but which each of us will have to endure -- or enjoy -- forever.

While the actual, external sin itself may be rather small, the mark upon the soul may be overwhelming:

One man may be so placed that his anger sheds the blood of thousands, and another so placed that however angry he gets he will only be laughed at.  But the little mark on the soul may be much the same in both.  Each has done something to himself, which, unless he repents, will make it harder for him to keep out of the rage next time he is tempted, and will make the rage worse when he does fall into it.  Each of them, if he seriously turns to God, can have that twist in the central man straightened out again:  each is, in the long run, doomed if he will not.  The bigness and smallness of the thing, seen from the outside, is not what really matters.

Finally, it is only as a man is getting better and better that he truly understands the evil inside him.  When a man is getting worse he understands his own badness less and less.  "A moderately bad man knows he is not very good:  a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right."  "Good people know about both good and evil:  bad people do not know about either."