48 / CHRONICLESnto have done; and we have done thosenthings which we ought not to havendone; and there is no health in us.”n(The last seven words do not exist innthe 1979 revision, which an Episcopalnfriend, one of the best men I know,nfound an improvement. “Thinkingnlike that is self-defeating,” he said. “Itnmakes it sound as if we can’t ever benany better than we are.” Wellll . . . )nThe General Confession of HolynCommunion in the old book, and innRite I in the new (used for eighto’clocknlow-church diehards), containsnthe lines, “We do earnestly repent,nand are heartily sorry for these ournmisdoings; the remembrance of themnis grievous unto us; the burden of themnis intolerable.”nNo other phrases in the services flynfrom my tongue as instinctively asnthese. The Apostles’ and Nicenencreeds are intricate and logical andnvaguely incomprehensible to me, althoughnI try to be saying the truthnabout what I believe when I say them;nbut these confessions are painful andnimmediate, compound fractures of mynwould-be private life, newly eloquentneach week with my most recent tearsnand same old fretful remorses. There isnno health in me; I will never get better.nAttribute this to any theological ornscientific cause you like, but call it thenhuman condition.nWhat I’d like to read about morenoften, I think, is the acknowledgmentnof: (a) a little more shame; and (b) thensometime appropriateness of “hypocrisy,”nwhich is often just good manners.nDate whatever kind of fauna you findnattractive, but don’t try to make usnthink perversion is enlightenment.nMankind has known better for millennia.nLet off a little steam on Fridaynnights, but take the children to Grandma’snfirst and tell her you’ll be workingnlate at the office; she’ll appreciate theneffort at pretense. Raise your illegitimatenchild, or give it up for adoption,nbut don’t ask me to pay you for it, ornact as if a one-parent home is the bestnof all possible worlds. Have the goodngrace to blush and avert your eyes oncenin a while. God knows we’ve allnearned that privilege.nccnJane Greer edits and publishes PlainsnPoetry Journal.nTYPEFACESnPsychology Today, PsychologynTomorrow, Psychology ForevernPsyche haunted the Romantic poetsnand their successors. Coleridge celebratedn”the butterfly the ancient Greciansnmade the soul’s fair emblem andnits only name.” Coleridge was a Christian.nBut the pagan Keats, in hisnsearch for a private “system of Salvation,”nsaid his prayers to Psyche,n”latest-born and loveliest vision far /nOf all Olympus’ faded hierarchy.”nKeats conceded that Psyche had previouslynbeen honored by “no shrine, nongrave, no oracle, no heat / Of palemouthednprophet dreaming.” But as annaturalized and humanized deity, thengoddess provided the ideal inspirationnfor his own devoted efforts to createn”the wreath’d trellis of a workingnbrain” and “all soft delight / Thatnshadowy thought can win.”nIt has been a century and a halfnsince Keats implored the new deity tonlet him be her “priest” and “choir,”nand still the reincarnated Psyche reignsnover much of what’s left of Englishspeakingnculture. Now, psychologistsnhave taken over from the poets as hernpriests, while popular journalists fillnthe choirs that echo the oracular pronouncements.nKeats’s verse is not toneveryone’s taste, but it is preferable tonthe prose of Rollo May and all the restnof the “self-actualizing” hedonism ofnPsychology Today.nAn unruly child of the counterculturenand the New Left of the 1960’s,nPsychology Today has, from the verynfirst, taken its religious responsibilitiesnseriously. Already in its second yearn(1969) they were observing that psychologynmust help man “face our ownninner experiences without the guidancenof traditional dogmas, ritual, ornpatriarchal authority—the foundationnstones of Judeo-Christian religious experience.nLeft without collectivelynsanctioned God-values and moral absolutes,nwe are compelled to erect ournnnown morality, arrive at our own faithnand belief, and discover the meaningnof our own existence.” In Love andnWill, published the same year in PT,nRollo May declared that “we have bidngoodbye to the theologians at the wakenfor our dead God.” Now the challengenfor May and his colleagues was to helpnothers overcome the anxieties causednby abandoning “the belief in immortalitynthat armored our ancestors.”nFour years later, in a chapter of WithoutnGuilt and Justice, published innPT, Walter Kaufmann rejoiced in thendecline of the belief that “moral viewsn… are simply part of being Jewish,nChristian, or, say, Hindu.” Only suchna religious decline allowed for peoplento become “autonomous individuals”nwho repudiate “craving for community”nas “regressive” and “inauthentic.”nThe fallen clerics of psychology divideninto numerous contending sects,nbut the celebrities all agree on man’sncomplete freedom to erect a personalnmorality meaning on the ruins of traditionalnreligion. The realm of thensupernatural cannot be entirelyndiscounted—so long as table-rappingnis taken seriously. A 1969 PT featurenhighlighted Duke’s parapsychologynlab, whose director explained that henwas only led to explore “the strange,nspecial dimensions of the humannmind” after his “religion had crumbled.”n”Some day,” Rhine insisted,n”religion will come to the laboratory.”n(Test-tube transubstantiation?) Fournyears later, PT again took a look atnparapsychology with an extended interviewnwith Stanley Krippner on telepathy,nprecognition, and the BermudanTriangle. Krippner admitted thatnmost scientists believe “parapsychologynis all nonsense,” but what psychologistncould resist the expansive freedomnof “altered states of consciousness”?nAdmittedly, many psychologists aren