Johann Christian August Heinroth (1773–1843) is often ridiculed today as the man who proclaimed that the main cause of mental illness was sin. In fact, it would suffice to replace the term “sin” by that of “guilt feeling” to make him appear almost contemporary. Heinroth was a learned man, a foremost clinician, and the author of a complete theory of the human mind . . . . Conscience [probably “consciousness” in ET] originates neither in the external world nor in the ego, but in an Über-uns (over-us) which Heinroth seems to equate with Reason and a way to God. According to him, health is freedom and mental illness is a reduction or loss of freedom. This loss of freedom is a result of Ich-Sucht (self-love) [self-seeking or self-absorption] and of the various passions. Delusion is a disturbance of the intellect, even though its cause lies in passion.

The second volume of Heinroth’s textbook contains a systematic description of his psychotherapeutic methods: The first step consists of determining to what degree a pathological state requires therapeutic help, and then to evolve a specific therapeutic plan that will consider not only the symptoms but also the sex, age, occupation, personality, and economic and social conditions of the patient. This plan of treatment should also extend to the patient’s family and surroundings. One main concern is to abstain from any unnecessary or dangerous treatment [primum non nocere!]. Heinroth then describes in a detailed and practical manner the various treatments that should be given to the excited and depressed patients as well as to patients of all conditions. Once again, the reader marvels at the modern character of many of these concepts.

—Henri F. Ellenberger
The Discovery of the Unconscious (1970)

—Erich Fromm
The Sane Society (1955)

History has no sides. That this has been easily missed by modern conservatives arises, I suspect, from the dearth of conservative historical consciousness. The bulk of modern conservative intellectual energy has been devoted to politics, economic policy, and political philosophy; there has been no corresponding conservative historical theory, much less a natural law theory of history. But there should, and must, be one. We will need it, too, because all the major movements of the last century into tyranny and intellectual vacuity have been built on theories, not of economics or politics, but of history.

—Allen Guelzo
in a review of Joel Richard Paul’s Indivisible: Daniel Webster and the Birth of American Nationalism, in the Claremont Review of Books (2022)

Your mission is not to save a dying world. No civilization has the promises of eternal life. Your mission is to live out with fidelity and without compromise the faith you received from Christ. In that way, even without realizing it, you will save the heritage of many centuries of faith. Do not be afraid because of your small numbers! It is not a matter of winning elections or influencing opinions. It is a matter of living the Gospel. . . . Faith is like a fire. A person himself must be on fire in order to be able to transmit it. Watch over this sacred fire! May it be your heat in the depths of the winter of the West.

—Robert Cardinal Sarah
The Day Is Now Far Spent (2019)

But this faith of which I am speaking must be a present faith. No faith that is exercised in the future tense amounts to anything. A man may believe forever that his sins will be forgiven at some future time, and he will never find peace. He has to come to the now belief, and say by faith, “My sins are now forgiven,” before he can live the new life. And, similarly, no faith which looks for a future deliverance from the power of sin, will ever lead a soul into the life we are describing. The enemy delights in this future faith, for he knows it is powerless to accomplish any practical results. But he trembles and flees when the soul of the believer dares to claim a present deliverance, and to reckon itself now to be free from his power.

—Hannah Whitall Smith
The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life (1875)

—Archimandrite Nicolae Steinhardt
The Diary of Happiness (2021)

—St. Faustina Kowalska
(1905–1938)

The western erotic revolution has deconstructed reality, nature, culture, civilization, tradition, authority, the rule of law, the image of the father, morality, religion, truth, good and evil, rationality, consciousness, objective knowledge, individual personality, personal happiness, eternal life, immorality, love of neighbor, friendship, affection. It has replaced reality with sensual gratification, spiritual progress with regression, reason capable of discernment with the reasoning of denial, normal sexuality with perversions, spiritual love with narcissistic love, moral conscience with the unconscious, imagination and sensuality. . . . The cultural fruits of deconstruction have been transformed into global norms during the global consensus-building process of the first half of the 1990s.

—Marguerite Peeters
The Globalization of the Western Cultural Revolution (2012), cited by Rod Dreher in The American Conservative (January 26, 2023)