Thoughts on Whatever Became of Sin? By Karl Menninger MD (1973) 8C

In Chapters 7 and 8, Menninger argued this: A “sin” may also be regarded as a “crime” or a “symptom”, but that does not mean that “sin” is no longer important.

The nested form, crime(sin(symptom)) preserves this substance and adds another layer of sophistication.  Every “sin” is contextualized as “crime” and made possible by “symptoms”.

If narcissism is defined as “what makes sins of pride possible”, then the basic nested form of crime(sin(symptom)) becomes crime(sins of pride(narcissism)).

So far so good, now let us go to the other axis.

Menninger mentions both “moral dereliction” and “self-deification” (137) as possible labels for what makes “the sins of pride” possible along this axis.  Thus making the nested form “groupthink(sins of pride(self-deification))”.

“Moral dereliction” and “self-deification” belong to “lack of conscience”.