MAKING A VIRTUE OF VICE
In a world whose motto has become 'You mustn't blame yourself; sin has been
replaced by sickness. Frank Furedi reports
ONCE upon a time there were seven deadly sins. They were called deadly because they led to spiritual death and therefore to damnation. The seven sins were (and are): lust, gluttony, avarice, sloth, anger, envy and pride. Now all of them, with the exception of pride, have become medical conditions. Pride has become a virtue.
A secular society always feels uncomfortable with the moral imagination associated with the seven deadly sins, The Enlightenment replaced the idea of sin, which is deemed to be an offence against God, with the idea of crime, which is an offence against other people. But the rationalists still shared with religion the belief that individuals are responsible for their wrongdoing. However, these days we do not simply feel estranged from a religious universe: we also find it difficult to attribute the act of sinning to human behaviour. Today, the notion of personal guilt, which underpins the concept of the seven deadly sins, exists only in caricature. That is why Western culture can only make sense of the act of sinning as a symptom of a regrettable psychological disease. Actions that were once denounced as a sin are no longer interpreted through the vocabulary of morality but are diagnosed through the language of therapy. The deadly sins have become behavioural problems that require treatment rather than punishment. There are no longer sinners, only addictive personalities. Take lust. Those who would have previously been called lustful are now described as 'addicted' to sex and in need of therapy. The American Association on Sexual Problems has estimated that between 10 and 15 per cent of all Americans — some 25 million people — are addicted to sex. Through the confessions of a number of high-profile sex addicts — David Duchovny and Michael Douglas, for example — what used to be called promiscuity has acquired a medical label. Friends and former lovers of Bill Clinton have also jumped on the bandwagon, and assert that he, too, is the victim of this addiction. Organisations such as Sex Addicts Anonymous insist that this condition is very difficult to cure. This was affirmed in a report written by an American doctor, Martha Turner, who claimed that sex addiction is the hardest psychological illness to treat, with high relapse rates and low levels of recovery. So what can you do? 'Your sexual behaviour is out of control and you want to get help', is the advice of Spirit of Recovery, an online organisation offering therapeutic advice.
Gluttony has also been transformed into an addiction. Gluttons no longer gorge themselves; they are simply suffering from one of a variety of eating disorders. Sections of the addiction industry even insist that compulsive eating is a psychological disease with a bio logical cause. One food-addiction expert contends, 'It is a physical disease characterised by obsession with food, obsession with weight and loss of control over the amount eaten.' These compulsions are represented as the outcome of a physiological or biochemical condition of the body, which creates 'cravings for complex carbohydrates'. Some go a step further, and argue that obesity is not really a problem since it is biologically based, and therefore natural. Charlotte Cooper, the author of Fat And Proud. believes that people are fat because 'genetic heritage determines our metabolic rate', and the problem is that society forces people to diet. 'I question our ability to choose our body shapes,' writes Cooper. So you might as well reconcile yourself to your genetic heritage.
Anger is deemed by some to be the most powerful emotional addiction, 'Have you ever been so angry that you felt like you could breathe fire?' asks Spirit of Recovery. If you have, 'you are truly addicted to this state of being, this emotional chemical trap that now determines your every action and feeling'. Conditions such as 'road rage', 'computer rage', 'trolley rage', 'golf rage' or 'air rage' suggest that this disease can afflict the individual in diverse settings. The therapeutic lobby claims that the solution to this emotional addiction is the application of stressor anger-management techniques. Major public and private institutions invest in anger-management therapy, and sometimes insist that employees go on courses that allow them to come to terms with their emotions.
So-called addictions to emotions such as anger often receive the medical label of an 'impulse-control disorder'. Avarice and envy have been recast as the inevitable consequence of modern consumer society, and are also sometimes diagnosed as an impulse-control disorder. It is claimed that ours is an addictive society that compels individuals to be envious of one another. Spending addiction, `shopaholism' and compulsive gambling are represented as diseases that are comparable to alcoholism and drug addiction. Spending addiction, sometimes called the 'plastic disease', gets you intoxicated so that you simply cannot help what you are doing.
Sloth has become medicalised. Conditions such as chronic fatigue continually invite people to make sense of their lassitude through a medical label. Attentiondeficit hyperactivity disorder provides an all-purpose explanation for individuals who are reluctant to focus or concentrate. But sloth need not be a wholly negative condition. Some forms of sloth are upheld as an antidote to stress-related illnesses. Hard work is often castigated as a risky enterprise. There is a great risk of contracting workaholism if you take your job too seriously. The positive virtue associated with work has given way to the conviction that work makes you ill.
And finally we come to what the Church considered to be the most deadly of the seven sins: pride. Of all the seven deadly sins, pride is the only one that has been completely rehabilitated. That is why pride is never diagnosed as a disease. The American sociologist Joel Best has observed that it is the absence of pride that constitutes a serious psychological problem. These days virtually every social and psychological problem is blamed on low self-esteem. The solution to poor educational performance, teenage pregnancy, anorexia, crime or homelessness is to raise the selfesteem of the victim. In our self-oriented world, society continually incites people to take themselves far too seriously. That is why pride has become one of the prime virtues of our time.
It should be noted that the therapeutic imperative alters the concept not only of sin but also of virtue. In the Middle Ages, practising the seven contrary virtues — humility, kindness, abstinence, chastity, patience, liberality, diligence — was believed to protect one against temptation towards the seven deadly sins. Today, people who practise some of these virtues are just as liable to be offered counselling as those who are tempted by sin. Kindness? Too much kindness may lead to compassion-fatigue. Diligence is sometimes dismissed as the act of someone suffering from a 'perfectionist complex'. Humble people lack self-esteem, and chastity is just another sexual dysfunction. Virtue is not so much its own reward as a condition requiring therapeutic intervention.
A medical diagnosis is applied not just to the classic virtues but also to the religious faith that underpins them. If you have too much faith you may be suffering from religious addiction. Father Leo Booth is. He is a spiritual adviser at a psychiatric centre in Canada. As well as being a recovering religious addict, he is a recovering alcoholic. In his book When God Becomes a Drug he writes, 'In essence we have become addicted to the certainty, sureness or sense of security that our faith provides.' If any readers of this magazine are worried about their faith, they can help themselves by dipping into Toxic Faith: Understanding and Overcoming Religious Addiction by Stephen Arterburn and Jack Felton.
To be honest, as a humanist I don't much like the idea of sin. But given the choice of being powerless in the face of God or an impotent client of a therapist, I side with the Church. Therapeutic definitions of addiction elevate the sense of human powerlessness to a level unimaginable in mediaeval times. From the standpoint of our therapeutic culture, powerlessness becomes not merely an episode in one's biography but its defining condition. From this fatalistic perspective, treatment acquires a passive, even fatalistic, character. Addicts are told that they will never be completely cured. We have recovering sex addicts, recovering religious addicts and recovering alcoholics. No one ever really changes. That's why I say bring back the idea of transcendence.
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