PWJ: S1E16 – MC B3C4 – “Morality and Psychoanalysis”

Is Psychoanalysis in competition with Christianity? Or are they, in fact, complementary? In today’s episode Matt and I will be unpacking what C.S. Lewis has to say about where psychoanalysis fits in with Christian morality and along the way we’ll learn some important lessons about not judging other people…

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Episode 16: “Morality and Psychoanalysis” (Download)

— Show Notes —

• My outline for today’s chapter is available here. Unfortunately, there isn’t a C.S. Lewis Doodle for it.

• My comment about “Pinky and Brain” was a reference to a Christmas Bonus Episode.

• Quote-of-the-week:

“Some of us who seem quite nice people may, in fact, have made so little use of a good heredity and a good upbringing that we are really worse than those whom we regard as fiends” (Mere Christianity)

• The Beer-of-the-week was actually a scotch! Today we were drinking Laphroaig (10 year). Since we’re classy guys, we were drinking them out of my “Catholic Man Show” Glencairn glasses. If you would like to have your own, you should join The Council of Man.

• Matt’s New Year Resolution was to cut out TV. I, however, assembled a list of all the movies which Matt needs to watch in order to become a well-balanced human being.

• Matt admitted to dressing up as Kylo Ren to watch the latest Star Wars movie. I begged him to send me a photo, but he wouldn’t play 🙁

• In the previous episode, we were looking at what a truly Christian society would look like. In this episode, we’re looking at what is needed for us to become the sort of people who would actually apply the Golden Rule in society, if we only knew how…

• Jack says that we can trust Freud when he’s talking about his specialty subject (neurotics), but not when he’s talking about philosophy because he’s an amateur. I expressed a similar opinion about Stephen Hawking and Matt said something similar about Richard Dawkins.

• Is psychoanalysis contrary to Christianity? Lewis says no.

• Lewis divides moral decisions into two parts:

1. The “raw materials” we bring to that situation
2. The choice itself

• The raw materials can then be subdivided into two:

(a) Normal feelings
(b) Abnormal feelings (e.g. fear of cats, spiders, enclosed spaces etc)

• Psychoanalysis deals with the abnormal feelings.

• At death, all will be revealed.

• Matt told a story from Lewis’ book, The Great Divorce.

• Be sure to take a look at the list of all the movies which Matt needs to watch!

• Also check out our new Instagram account!