Therapy of Scrupulous Conscience

Abstract

Scrupulous conscience is characterized by an anxious, inadequate and negative moral evaluation of one's thoughts, words, and deeds. This phenomenon is connected with deformations in moral evaluations. The scrupulous person is often thought to find it difficult to distinguish evil from good. A closer analysis, however, points mainly to the legalistic level. The scrupulous person usually judges his deed rather from the legal point of view, along the line: permitted-prohibited, and not in the categories of good-evil.

Psychiatrists and psychologists treat scruples as a specific manifestation of obsessive neurosis, with the stipulation that not in every neurosis of that kind there occur symptoms called scruples, for not all its symptoms must have a moral content, nor every neurosis deforms conscience. Apart from that the scrupulous people, as a rule, do not have any other types of neurotic symptoms.

In the remarks on the “pastoral therapy” of scrupulous conscience the tasks of a clergyman and psychotherapist (psychiatrist, psychologist) have been defined and characterized. It has been stressed that in difficult cases it is an optimal situation when a priest and a psychotherapist work together, providing of course strictly defined conditions, dependent on various competencies. There may be situations when a priest, having no contact with a psychotherapist, must manage the process of the “therapy” of conscience on his own.

Some basic practical postulates have been put forward, all of them indispensable when a priest wishes to be effective in his role as a confessor and “therapist,” as regards moral and religious affairs of the people with a neurotic conscience. Such proposals are in now way detailed recipes, therefore one should be flexible in their interpretation. In each case those proposals should be adjusted to personality traits of a given person and to the specific character of his or her problems.