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UNBELIEF IN THE INDIVIDUAL
reality of spiritual values in the attempt to convince himself and
others that a mode of living which has its root in moral
weakness is the result of a free choice based upon an intellectual
appreciation of the meaning of human existence.
Unbelief may also occur as the expression of a wish-fulfilment:
the resolution of a conflict of conscience. Here is a case which
illustrates this. A young man whose religious interests were
strong in childhood at length discarded them and became a
freethinker. He maintained this position for several years.
Then a religious crisis occurred, from which he emerged a
convinced and active Christian. Reflecting upon the causes of his
earlier denial of spiritual values, he came at length to the
conclusion that they were partly intellectual snobbishness and partly
a desire to express resentment at a rationalistic interpretation
of Christianity given to him at a school he had attended. He
explained his change of conviction by saying thatintellectualism
and the difficulties of faith had caused him to dam the stream of
his religious vitality; but its strength became too great and his
spiritual crisis, or conversion, occurred when the barriers
broke down under the strain and power flowed like a spring
tide.
But some years later this young man was psychoanalysed.
Then it became clear that neither the religious instruction
received at school nor the intellectual arrogance of adolescence
had occasioned the agnosticism, but a conflict of conscience
associated with strong feelings of personal guilt coloured with
religious feelings. This state had gradually become intolerable,
and as a way out, since his conscience would not be silenced, the
young man discarded everything that gave the voice of
conscience its authority. If God did not exist, he need not fear him
—s0 he denied the existence of God. However, the denial and
the irreligious frame of mind that resulted from it were mere
evasions; and the true conflict which had been thrust out of
consciousness was not resolved by the conversion crisis that
later occurred. Although after that crisis he lived a religious
life, he suffered from painful alternations of mood, swinging
from doubt to belief and back again; from childish trust to
intellectual questioning. Only when the real conflict of
conscience was revealed during analysis did he experience complete
release, assurance and maturity of faith; redemption and
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