S1E16 – MC B3C4 – “Morality and Psychoanalysis”

Is Psychoanalysis in competition with Christianity? Or are they, in fact, complementary? In today’s episode Matt and David will be unpacking what C.S. Lewis has to say about where psychoanalysis fits in with Christian morality and along the way we’ll learn some important lessons about not judging other people…

S1E16: Mere Christianity: “Morality and Psychoanalysis” (Download)

Show Notes

Introduction

• David’s comment about “Pinky and Brain” was a reference to a Christmas Bonus Episode.

Quote-of-the-Week

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 fiends.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Toast

• The Beer-of-the-week was actually a scotch! Today we were drinking Laphroaig (10 year). Since we’re classy guys, we were drinking them out of David’s “Catholic Man Show” Glencairn glasses. If you would like to have your own, you should join The Council of Man.

Chit-Chat

• Matt’s New Year Resolution was to cut out TV. David, however, assembled a list of all the movies which Matt needs to watch in order to become a well-balanced human being.
• Matt admitted to dressing up as Kylo Ren to watch the latest Star Wars movie. David begged him to send him a photo, but he wouldn’t play 🙁

Discussion

01. “What is Psychoanalysis?”

• In the previous episode, we were looking at what a truly Christian society would look like. This week, we’re looking at what is needed for us to become the sort of people who would actually apply the Golden Rule in society, if we only knew how…

I now want to begin considering what the Christian idea of a good man is – the Christian specification for the human machine.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Social Morality

• Lewis points out that there is another thing that attempts to do this.

Since Christian morality claims to be a technique for putting the human machine right, I think you would like to know how it is related to another technique which seems to make a similar claim – namely, psychoanalysis.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Social Morality

• Jack makes a distinction between psychoanalysis and Freudian concepts. He says that we can trust Freud when he’s talking about his specialty subject (neurotics), but not when he’s talking about philosophy because he’s an amateur. David expressed a similar opinion about Stephen Hawking and Matt said something similar about Richard Dawkins.

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.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Social Morality

02. “Psychoanalysis vs. Christianity”

• Is psychoanalysis contrary to Christianity? Lewis says no.

Psychoanalysis itself, apart from all the philosophical additions that Freud and others have made to it, is not in the least contradictory to Christianity. Its technique overlaps with Christian morality at some points and it would not be a bad thing if every person knew something about it: but it does not run the same course all the way, for the two techniques are doing rather different things.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Social Morality

• Lewis divides moral decisions into two parts:

1. The “raw materials” we bring to that situation
2. The choice itself

When a man makes a moral choice two things are involved. One is the act of choosing. The other is the various feelings, impulses, and so on which his psychological outfit presents him with, and which are the raw material of his choice.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Social Morality

• The raw materials can then be subdivided into two:

(a) Normal feelings
(b) Abnormal feelings (e.g. fear of cats, spiders, enclosed spaces etc)

This raw material may be of two kinds. Either it may be what we would call normal: it may consist of the sort of feelings that are common to all men. Or else it may consist of quite unnatural feelings due to the things that have gone wrong in his subconscious. Thus fear of things that are really dangerous 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 of the first kind: the perverted desire of a man for a man would be of the second.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Social Morality

• Psychoanalysis according to Lewis, deals with the abnormal feelings.

03. “Choice and Raw Materials”

• There is a difference between the choice and the raw materials.

What psychoanalysis undertakes to do is to remove the abnormal feelings, that is, to give the man better raw material for his acts of choice; morality is concerned with the acts of choice themselves.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Social Morality

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

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Social Morality

• Lewis uses the analogy of three men who go to war.

Imagine three men go to a war. One has the ordinary natural fear of danger that any man has and he subdues it by moral effort and becomes a brave man. Let us suppose that the other two have, as a result of things in their subconscious, exaggerated, irrational fears, which no amount of moral effort can do anything about. Now suppose that a psychoanalyst comes along and cures these two: that is, he puts them both back in the position of the first man. Well it is just then that the psychoanalytical problem is over and the moral problem begins.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Social Morality

• The moral problem not begins for the two men. They could use their journey for completely different purposes; there is a choice to be selfless or self-centered.

The other might say ‘Well, I’m very glad that I now feel moderately cool under fire, but, of course, that doesn’t alter the fact that I’m still jolly well determined to look after Number One and let the other chap do the dangerous job whenever I can.’

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Social Morality

• The judgements of man and the judgements of God are very different. Humans look purely by actions, whereas God sees our souls. Lewis explains this through … you guessed it … more analogies.

When a neurotic who has a pathological horror of cats forces himself to pick up a cat for some good reason, it is quite possible that in God’s eyes he has shown more courage than a healthy man may have shown in winning the V.C. 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.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Social Morality

• Lewis even challenges the good. There might be many people who coast through life on their gifts or the environment in which they were raised.

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 fiends. 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 Christians are told not to judge.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Social Morality

• Lewis ends the section by concluding that, at death, all will be revealed.

Most of the 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 though 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.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Social Morality

04. “Christian Morality”

• Lewis makes the point that we should not look at morality as a bargain with God.

People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says ‘If you keep a lot of rules I’ll reward you, and if you don’t I’ll do the other thing.’ I do not think that is the best way of looking at it. 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.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Social Morality

• Each of these choices that we make bring us closer to heaven or hell. Lewis illustrates this in a succinct point:

Taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature … Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Social Morality

05. “Turning Towards Heaven or Hell”

• This notion helped Jack understand what he was learning from other Christian writers.

That explains what always used to puzzle me about Christian writers; they seem to be so very strict at one moment and so very free and easy at another. They talk about mere sins of thought as if they were immensely important and then they talk about the most frightful murders and treacheries as if you had only got to repent and all would be forgiven.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Social Morality

• Matt mentioned that Lewis summarised this concept well in “The Great Divorce”.

The bigness or smallness of the thing, seen from the outside, is not what really matters.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Social Morality

• David talked about the Catholic sacrament of confession, and how frequent participation in the sacrament leads to a greater sensitivity towards sin.

When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in 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.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Social Morality

06. “Summary”

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Wrap Up

Concluding Thoughts

• The outline for today’s chapter is available here.
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