On Evil

The modern age has witnessed what one might call a transition from the soul to the psyche. Or, if one prefers, from theology to psychoanalysis.There are many senses in which the latter is a stand-in for the former. Both are narratives of human desire - though for religious faith that desire can finally be consummated in the kingdom of God,whereas for psychoanalysis it must remain tragically unappeased. In this sense, psychoanalysis is the science of human discontent. But so, too, is 

theology. With Freud, repression and neurosis play the role of what Christians have traditionally known as original sin. In each case, human beings are seen as born  in sickness. But they are thereby not beyond redemption. Happiness is not beyond our grasp; it is just that it requires of us a traumatic breaking down and remaking, for which the Christian term is convertion. Both sets of belief investigate phenomena  which finally outstrip the bounds of human knowledge, whether you call this the enigmatic unconscious or un unfathomable God. Both are well supplied with rituals of initiaton, confession, and excommunication, and both are ridden with internecine feuds. They are also alike in provoking derisive incredulity from the wordly, commonsensical, and hard-headed.

Terry Eagleton