Book III. Christian Behaviour 4. Morality and Psychoanalysis -C.S.Lewis
4. Morality and Psychoanalysis
I have said that we should never get a Christian society unless most of
us became Christian individuals. That does not mean, of course, that we can
put off doing anything about society until some imaginary date in the far
future. It means that we must begin both jobs at once-(1) the job of seeing
how "Do as you would be done by" can be applied in detail to modern society,
and (2) the job of becoming the sort of people who really would apply it if
we saw how. I now want to begin considering what the Christian idea of a
good man is-the Christian specification for the human machine.
Before I come down to details there are two more general points I
should like to make. First of all, 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.
Now you want to distinguish very clearly between two things: between
the actual medical theories and technique of the psychoanalysts, and the
general philosophical view of the world which Freud and some others have
gone on to add to this. The second thing-the philosophy of Freud-is in
direct contradiction to Christianity: and also in direct contradiction to
the other great psychologist, Jung. And furthermore, 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. It is therefore quite sensible to attend to him with respect in the
one case and not in the other-and that is what I do. I am all the readier to
do it because I have found that when he is talking off his own subject and
on a subject I do know something about (namely, languages) he is very
ignorant. But 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 parson knew
something about it: but it does not run the same course all the way, for the
two techniques are doing rather different things.
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. Now 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 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. Now 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.
Put it this way. Imagine three men who go to 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 sub-consciousness, 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. Because, now
that they are cured, these two men might take quite different lines. The
first might say, "Thank goodness I've got rid of all those doodahs. Now at
last I can do what I always wanted to do-my duty to the cause of freedom."
But 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. Indeed one of the good things about feeling
less frightened is that I can now look after myself much more efficiently
and can be much cleverer at hiding the fact from the others." Now this
difference is a purely moral one and psychoanalysis cannot do anything about
it. However much you improve the man's raw material, you have still got
something else: the real, free choice of the man, on the 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. And by the way, that is very
important. Human beings judge one another by their external actions. God
judges them by their moral choices. 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.
It is as well to put this the other way round. 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? That is why Christians are told not to
judge.
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. Most of the man's psychological make-up 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 tune, see every one as he
really was. There will be surprises.
And that leads on to my second point. 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.
And 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: either into a creature that is in
harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into
one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its
fellow-creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven:
that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means
madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us
at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.
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. But
I have come to see that they are right. 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-for ever. 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 or smallness of the thing,
seen from the outside, is not what really matters.
One last point. Remember that, as I said, the right direction leads not
only to peace but to knowledge. 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. This is common sense, really. You understand sleep when you are
awake, not while you are sleeping. You can see mistakes in arithmetic when
your mind is working properly: while you are making them you cannot see
them. You can understand the nature of drunkenness when you are sober, not
when you are drunk. Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do
not know about either.
