Or the daughter who collapses in guilt over the sin of not wanting to devote her life to caring for the ailing father
who has given her cause to feel only hatred?
Or the adolescent who flees into homosexuality because he has been taught that sex is evil and that women are to
be worshipped, but not desired?
Or the businessman who suffers an anxiety attack because, after years of being urged to be thrifty and industrious,
he has finally committed the sin of succeeding, and is now told that it shall be easier for the camel to pass through
the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven?
Or the neurotic who, in hopeless despair, gives up the attempt to solve his problems because he has always heard it
preached that this earth is a realm of misery, futility, and doom, where no happiness or fulfillment is possible to
man?
If the advocates of these doctrines bear a grave moral responsibility, there is a group who, perhaps, bears a graver
responsibility still: the psychologists and psychiatrists who see the human wreckage of these doctrines, but who
remain silent and do not protest—who declare that philosophical and moral issues do not concern them, that
science cannot pronounce value judgments—who shrug off their professional obligations with the assertion that a
rational code of morality is impossible, and, by their silence, lend their sanction to spiritual murder.
The Danger of Authoritarianism
Mental health requires of man that he place no value above perception, i.e., no value above consciousness, i.e., no
value above reality.
If the patient is to be cured of his neurosis, he must learn to distinguish between a thought and a feeling, between a
fact and a wish, and to recognize that nothing but destruction can result from sacrificing one's sight of reality to any
other consideration. He must learn to seek his sense of self-esteem in the productive use of his mind, in the
achievement of rational values, on whatever his level of ability. He must learn that the approval of others cannot be
a substitute for self-esteem, and that only anxiety is possible to those who attempt such a substitution. He must
learn not to be afraid to question and challenge the prevalent beliefs of his culture. He must learn to reject the
claims of those who demand his