Forty years after Menninger’s observation that the word “sin” was disappearing, we have a potential explanation.

Menninger’s observation fits into a scenario where the Public Cult of Progressivism (which was constituting itself at the time, along with the private cults of the New Age Movement) discouraged the term “sin”.  Instead of “sin”, they pronounced a litany of objections, complaints, irritations, annoyances, insults, grievances, and false expectations.

So instead of the pejorative “sinner”, terms such as “polluter”, “racist”, “sexist”, “homophobe” and similar words were coined.  That also explains why the term “politically incorrect” joined the lexicon as a derogatory catch-all word.

Ironically, this new litany of Progressive perjoratives was acceptable to Behaviorists and Psychoanalysts, because, in principle, they were “descriptive” hence “neutral” terms.

According to Freud, the “superego” is a psychological structure consisting of a system of polarities.

The term “sin” belongs to the client’s system of polarities, not to the psychoanalyst’s.

Consider psychotherapy for a neurotic Christian.  If a psychoanalyst said, “Wasn’t that sinful?”, then she would speak in the patient’s system of polarities and, with that participation, tacitly validate the patient’s (often maladaptive) tautologies.  Instead, she could say, “Wasn’t that self-destructive?” without implicitly validating the patient’s biases.

In other words, the Psychiatrist should not naively validate the patient’s superego during therapy.  The Psychiatrist must distance herself from the patient’s superego.  After all, the patient’s superego is already projecting its own drama onto the Psychiatrist.  Her job is to escape the box, that is, the transference.

Despite this, Menninger emphasized that the patient would be worse off if she did not have strong superego formation in the first place, especially one that emphasized personal responsibility.

Does that imply that the family, church, community and guild are crucial for mental health?

Or, even more twisted:

Does that imply that psychoanalysis only works on Christians and Jews because they believe in “sin” and “personal responsibility”?

How does a person know what “sin” is?

A Christian’s sense of “sin” comes from four sources.

Parents, churches, communities and workplaces present the developing person with abstract polarities that serve as guides.

Some of these polarities are general. Charity is a virtue.  Stealing is a sin. Some are very particular.  Menninger’s mother was horrified when she learned that the house they bought contained poorly heated (now-unused) “slave quarters”.

Some polarities are spoken.  Some are not.

Freud labeled this system of polarities as the “superego”.