Sin

Abstract

In this chapter, the salient history of the psychology of “sin” is considered. By “salient history” is meant what the psychoanalyst Anna Aragno posited concerning the issue of evil noted as represented and reflected in the Satanic Masses where free reign was given to depraved priests who “reveled in sexual abuse, torture, and human sacrifice” (Issues in Psychoanalytic Psychology, vol. 35. Washington Square Institute for Psychotherapy and Mental Health, New York, 2013, p. 103). Further, Aragno reports that this “….decline into demonology and the belief in demonic possession confused astronomy, philosophy, and cosmology with sorcery, alchemy, and astrology.” All of it was a refutation of knowledge in order to control the populace so that only the literal reading of scripture was permitted. Thus, the only important objective was to establish what the rules were for the appearance of cardinal sins in relation to raw evil. “Of course, heresy,” as Aragno states, “became the new cardinal sin.”

The behavior of Christian clerics who tortured, sexually abused, and engaged in human sacrifice is therefore the true illustration of acting out ─ rather than clerical life posing as a life illustrating understanding and knowledge. Other than being mesmerized in the delirium of the issue of the sin against Jesus, it would have perhaps for the first time in Christian history have been a ray of light should the alternative correspondingly have been to focus instead on one’s interior psychology.

In any rigorous and introspective possible personal search of the self, what might have (or would have) emerged is the undeniable revelation that in the unconscious mind exists a God. It is the God of one’s basic-wish that only wants what it wants ─ especially in the sense of its specific and sole concern with itself and in the complete absence of any concern with social consequences. It is therefore an unconscious mind that remains without civilization, without civility, and in the absence of anything but solipsism.

The secular problem was not “world sin” (because of the Crucifixion or even because of Adam’s disobedience). Rather, from a secular vantage point, the so-called sin has always been the domain of the individual’s struggle with one’s own unconscious basic-wish’s megalomania. That is to say: Is our unconscious concealment of our own motives, psychology, and wishes (and not anything else) that which brings into the world uncivilized living and its derivative acting out oppressive behavior toward others? If so, then the revelatory good news (as a moment of freedom from sin) is still, from a secular point of view, not understood ─ especially in the absence of knowing the unconscious.

Thus, does the objective of happiness exist in light of the theological/religious lifting of sin, or does it exist in the psychoanalysis of “digging deeply” that rather replaces the objective of happiness with the difficult yet optimistic prospect of “struggle”? It is in this sense and from a secular point of view that the statement about how civilization is in bondage to “our sins” is translated into a bondage to our own unconscious.

Rutledge (The crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ. William B. Eerdmans Publishing, Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, p 198, 2015) quotes Pogo, the comic strip by Walt Kelly. It is an incisive statement of this difference between psychoanalytic and theological perspectives. Pogo says: “Yep, son, we have met the enemy and he is us.”

The chapter also reviews the history of connecting issues including sin, death, demons, and the Protestant theologian Martin Luther ─ who from the popular point of view is seen as a pure Christian, but which in reality actually makes him the Demon who exhorts vituperative hatred toward those he would wanted tortured and killed ─ Jews! (Luther, [Bertram, M. H., Luther’s Werke: Luther’s works. Fortress Press, pp 268–271], 1971).