Article January 30, 1984 Issue

Destroying guilt—an aid to healing

ROBERT A. MOSS

Illness, bodily malfunctions, and many diseases called incurable may be rooted in a deep and abiding sense of guilt. Medicine and material psychology will not relieve this guilt. Physical manipulation will not shift it; drugs will not cure it. In Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth, Macbeth cries out to the English doctor:

Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas'd,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart? Macbeth, V, 3 .