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”.

Chapter 3 contains “an eyewitness account of the disappearance of sin”.

Psychiatry is an art.  An analyst can be both right and wrong at the same time.  Menninger was correct in presenting an incorrect interpretation.  He “heard” a pattern in popular and intellectual discourse and guessed what it indicated.

What was that pattern?  The word “sin” had disappeared in current “prophetic” discourse (such as the editorial page of the New Yorker).

For example, Menninger described the horrible – over the top – village massacre by Lt. William Calley during the Vietnam War.  None of the “prophetic” Progressives called it a “sin”, even though they dramatically condemned the massacre.

What did the disappearance indicate?

Perhaps, the “prophets” forgot or misplaced their definitions of “sin”.

Menninger offered this definition: Sin is a transgression of the law of God; disobedience of the divine will; moral failure.  Withdrawal, supererogation, and self-absorption are characteristics of “sin”.  Sin has many implications: guilt, answerability, responsibility, confession, attrition, reparation, repentance, forgiveness, atonement and many more.

Many psychological “scientists”, such as Behavioralists and Psychiatrists, rejected the concept of “sin”, plus all its implications, because the idea was not “scientific”.

Perhaps, they rejected it for other reasons.

“Sin” did not belong to the emerging symbolic order.

Menninger’s dreamy confusion serves as an exemplar for why Progressives could not be stopped.

Progressives criticized Christians for failing to live up to their own ideals.   At the same time, they redefined those ideals.

Progressives proclaimed themselves “not-religious” (and therefore, technically, not subject to the first amendment).  At the same time, they re-interpreted Constitutional provisions designed to limit the scope of the central government.  They pursued sovereign power.

In short, they claimed dominion over what the Founding Documents had set aside, and when the Constitution complained, they raped her then gave her a little office with a nice title, “Living Document” (in service to the Union god).

How could anyone figure out what was happening?  The Progressives followed a script as unwritten and ancient as Civilization itself.  The hero in the script is primitive, archaic, creative, like a wind blowing between the waters above and the waters below, grasping sovereign power, and confident that the fault for every horror lies not in the hero, but in the image in the mirror.

What about “the Master sowing his own fields with weeds” in Menninger’s re-telling of the parable in Matthews?

Menninger ignored the many brave people of faith who resisted various manifestations of Progressivism and converted its path from direct takeover (through revolution, as in Soviet Communism, or through military coup or ballot box, as in various Fascisms) to the less direct methods of institutional infiltration and capture.

Only in 2008 did the Public Cult directly takeover of all branches of the central government through the ballot box.

Was Menninger projecting himself onto others with his account of “the Master sowing his own fields while asleep”?   Certainly, he confounded Progressive Post-Religious Global Intellectuals (PORGIs) – the proverbial weeds – and the Prophets of Ancient Israel – the wheat.  What was he doing?  Was he not awake?

We can compare this chapter on “what is wrong?” to elements in An Archaeology of the Fall.

The litany of complaints, the implication of a malaise, and the self-serving diagnoses parallel the image of a Union-god separating the heaven-god of Christianity and the earth-goddess of the Founding Documents & Marketplace.

The Progressive Movement re-enacted the denudation of An (the waters-above god) and the rape of Ki (the waters-below goddess) by Enlil (the air god).  This claim highlights the archaic features of the rise and establishment of the Public Cult.  We are not experiencing “progress”.  We are experiencing a Sumerian drama.

In 2012, American discourse is saturated with fear and loathing.  Christianity stands “naked” in the “public square”.  The Constitution lies raped by lawyer’s tongues.

Progressive complaints often follow the logic of “projection”.  The French Protestant complaint actually describes society after the success of the Progressive agenda.  The “strong” include “the central government, conformist media, self-anointed academia, government unions, crony capitalist bankers and lawyers, and so forth”.   The “Weak” include “small businesses, churches, two parent families, non-governmental non-union workers, and so forth”.

The roles have changed 40 years after this now-forgotten Projection – er – Declaration, revealing a lesson that should have been apparent long ago: Progressive complaints tell the world their unconscious, denied intentions.

Progressives see the world through the mirror of projection and denial, just like the now-forgotten (another projection) Public Cults of Communism and Fascism.

The second chapter of Menninger’s book layers further echoes Progressive complaints.  An editor asks: “What ails the American Spirit?”  Answers come from professors of government, history and humanities.  Menninger calls them “prophets”.

Menninger recounted the French Protestant’s Declaration (1972) of the unacceptability of the present economic and political system.  “The Strong dominate and manipulate the Weak in socioeconomic activities radically incompatible with the gospel”.

Then, Menninger asked: Who is to blame?  He suggested a re-reading of the parable in Matthew where the Master’s fields were sown with weeds after the grain was coming up.  In Menninger’s re-telling, the Master himself, unconscious, in his sleep, went out and sowed weeds into his own fields.

What to make of Menninger’s “brief and biased view of moral history”?  Consider chapter 1 in An Archaeology of the Fall, written in a similar stream of consciousness, 40 years later.  Both

-Identify that “something is wrong”

-Note the spiritually disfiguring growth of the United States of America

-Identify Lincoln’s death as a turning point (In Whatever: A cryptotheological formula – an immortal leader martyred: In An Archaeology: the Union was born)

-Envision a movement that results in self-serving and incomprehensible people who are resistant to prophets (In Whatever: the movement is towards affluence: In An Archaeology: the movement is a social construction in service to the Union god)

What is a difference between these two works?  An Archaeology of the Fall (2012) was written after the Progressive Movement has consolidated. Whatever Became of Sin? (1973) was written in the process of that consolidation.

In 2012, one cannot be both a Christian and a Progressive.

In 1973, Menninger was both a believer and a Progressive.

In 2012, the Progressive does not care about Menninger.  He served his purpose.  The Progressive has moved on.  The Christian, however, can look back – almost in amazement – at this hybrid Christian Psychoanalyst whose book went through at least 7 reprints.

The first four chapters of this book are devoted to picturing a change in the American (also, Western) civilization during the third quarter of the twentieth century.

In the first chapter, Menninger wrote – in almost free association – his impression of the ancient Jewish prophets.  The Jewish prophets spoke to uncomprehending prosperous folk.

Then Menninger considered how America came to be.  America was settled (by Europeans) through betrayal (of the Natives) and conflict (with each other and the crown).  At some point, they turned on each other in bloody warfare.  An “immortal leader” was martyred.  Territorial expansion resumed, bringing human misery and ecological devastation.  Now, America is full of uncomprehending prosperous folk.  And, just like in ancient Israel, prophets have appeared to affluent America, raising their voices: “Something is wrong”.

And, amazingly, Menninger’s “prophets” includes Professors of Government.

Hmmm.