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of the spirit, low moral standards and permis- lity and love. A traumatized person in a sense
siveness. These are not terms of clinical psycho- ‘enjoys’ being ‘insane’, it gives him absolute free-
logy (it is rather a matter of ethics or education, dom and the power to be ‘free-willed’. It is the
which does not belong to the domain of clinical open gate for conscious or unconscious pleasu-
psychology) but their place in therapeutic ana- re received from uncontrollability and permis-
lysis shows that degradation of moral standards siveness.
and depravity of spirit affects the psyche and
its health. The effects of immorality are much Here we come to the ethical aspect in therapy.
more destructive and more real fot the human It is clear that the moral views of the therapist,
psyche than is commonly admitted in clinical their personal moral standards are not transfer-
literature. red directly to their patients in the psychothe-
‘Madness’ in this context has a spiritual conno- rapeutic interaction. What we have to be based
tation; it is not a clinical term, not a psychia- on as Christian psychotherapists is the belief of
tric diagnosis, but the state of a human spirit, the ontological coherence of evil, sin and death.
the rejection of the reason and sanity of God- The moral consciousness of the therapist rests
given human nature. Dwelling in ‘madness’ of- on this strong postulate. From this perspective
ten seems almost a conscious choice. It is made he cooperates with the patient in gaining life-
in favor of that ‘freedom’, which appears, albeit saving resources for patient’s personal being,
in a form of psychopathology, but nevertheless relying on man’s likeness of God as the basis of
as a ebellion against the divine spiritual law, as human personality.
an internal ‘right’ to disregard the law of mora-

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