229 - Symptoms Or Sins?

Symptoms Or Sins?
By Karl A. Menninger
Princeton Theological Seminary, the L. P. Stone Lectures, 1969.

Dr. Karl A. Menninger, distinguished psychiatrist, and, for many years Chief of Staff of the Menninger Foundation, Topeka, Kansas, delivered the L. P. Stone Lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary, April 7-10, 1969, on the general topic: "Symptoms or Sins?" Dr. Menninger, now Chairman of the Board of the Menninger Foundation, and residing in Chicago where he is the Senior Consultant for the Stone-Brandel Center, presented his five lectures to large and enthusiastic audiences.

Those present who were familiar with Dr. Menninger's contributions found the lectures to be a development of his mature thought. All, however, found that Dr. Menninger bad brought some of his ideas into a new focus, and his enthusiastic communication of this focus brought genuine life to the lectures.

He began by delineating the history of the modern conception of mental illness, stemming from the contribution of Freud and others, in which he pointed out that much destructive behavior, formerly thought of as sinful, has in modern times come to be seen as "symptom" of some underlying illness. Dr. Menninger indicated his fundamental agreement with the intent of this development, which was to get away from the punitive attitude, that has characterized our culture, to such unwanted behavior. He indicated his belief that punishment in the sense of inflicting pain is always wrong, though penalties may be needed. The issues alluded to here have been more thoroughly discussed in his recent book, The Crime of Punishment (Viking Press, 1968).

In quite recent years, said the lecturer, some psychiatrists, including himself, have come to recognize that the radical distinction between symptoms and sins has been overstressed by the previous generation. Speaking with the authority of one whose professional life has spanned the entire epoch, Menninger then began to point out certain basic similarities between symptoms and sins. He noted that at the core of much unwanted behavior there is a phenomenon which he called self-adoration, charac-

230 - Symptoms Or Sins?

terized by the psychiatrists as narcissism, and by the theologians as selfishness. Further, he pointed out that both symptoms and sins have an aggressive quality, and that both in some way signal that something is wrong.

He did point out some differences, saying that sin is more or less conscious, while symptoms are more or less unconscious; that sin represents a departure from some moral norm, and not merely a "workable" norm; that sin is usually, in the main, painful. No general definitive statement of the relationship between sins and symptoms was attempted. In conclusion, Dr. Menninger strongly urged ministers and other religious workers to take seriously the opportunities they have to help people, saying that they have greater capacities than they know, and that they should not hesitate to apply the accrued wisdom of the tradition as it may be helpfully blended with modern science.

I found much in these lectures that was stimulating, and I was intrigued by Dr. Menninger's thesis regarding the similarity of symptoms and sins. I believe that a general theory of their relationship would have to take into account the factors of the sequential and, to some extent, causal relationship between symptoms and sins, which often are functions of one another. An additional similarity appears to me to be that both involve in most instances the substitution of some partial satisfaction for some more essential and vital aim.

James N. Lapsley
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, New Jersey