Guilt, anxiety, and self-doubt—the neurotic's chronic complaints—entail moral judgments. The psychotherapist
must deal with such judgments constantly. The conflicts that torture patients are moral conflicts: Is sex evil, or is it
a proper human pleasure?—Is the profit motive evil, or do men have the right to pursue their own interests?—Must
one love and forgive everybody, or is it ever justifiable to feel violent indignation?—Must man blindly submit to
the teachings of his religious authorities, or dare he subject their pronouncements to the judgment of his own
intellect?—Is it one's duty to remain with the husband or wife one no longer loves, or is divorce a valid solution?—
Should a woman regard motherhood as her noblest function and duty, or may she pursue an independent career?—
Is man "his brother's keeper," or does he have the right to live for his own happiness?
It is true that patients frequently repress such conflicts and that the repression constitutes the major obstacle to the
conflict's resolution. But it is not true that merely bringing such conflicts into conscious awareness guarantees that
the patients will resolve them. The answers to moral problems are not self-evident; they require a process of
complex philosophical thought and analysis.
Nor does the solution lie in instructing the patient to "follow his deepest feelings." That frequently is the policy that
brought him to disaster in the first place. Nor does the solution lie in "loving" the patient, and, in effect, giving him
a moral blank check (which is one of the approaches most commonly advocated today). Love is not a substitute for
reason, and the suspending of all moral estimates will not provide the patient with the code of values that his mental
health requires. The patient feels confused, he feels uncertain of his judgment, he feels he does not know what is
right or wrong; if the therapist, to whom the patient has come for guidance, is professionally committed to not
knowing, the impasse is total.
To the extent that the therapist acts on the principle that he must be silent in moral issues, he passively confirms
and sanctions the monopoly on morality held by mysticism—more specifically, by religion. Yet no conscientious
therapist can escape the knowledge that religious teachings frequently are instrumental in causing the patient's
neurosis.