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”?