Matthew Henry John Bartlett

Patients in therapy all begin by protesting, “I want to be good.” If they cannot accomplish this, it is only because they are “inadequate,” can’t control themselves, are too anxious, or suffer from unconcious impulses. Being neurotic is being able to act badly without feeling responsible for what you do.
   The therapist must try to help the patient to see that he is exactly wrong, that is, that he is lying when he says he wants to be good. He really wants to be bad. Morality is an empircal issue. Worse yet, he wants to be bad but to have an excuse for irresponsibility, to be able to say, “But I can’t help it.”
   [Dante’s] only way out is to see that his pilgrimage to the Heavenly City must be undertaken along the road through Hell. When we lay claim to the evil in ourselves, we no longer need fear its occurring outisde of our control. For example, a patient comes into therapy complaining that he does not get along well with other people; somehow he always says the wrong thing and hurts their feelings. He is really a nice guy, just has this uncontrollable, neurotic problem. What he does not want to know is that his “unconscious hostility” is not his problem, it’s his solution. He is really not a nice guy who wants to be good; he’s a bastard who wants to hurt other people while still thining of himself as a nice guy. If the therapist can guide him into the pit of his own ugly soul, then there may be hope for him. Once this pilgrim can see how angry and vindictive he is, he can trace his story and bring it to the light, instead of beign doomed to relive it without awareness. Nothing about ourselves can be changed until it is first accepted. Jung points out that “the sick man has not to learn how to get rid of his neurosis but how to bear it. For the illness is not a superfluous and senseless burden, it is himself; he himself is that ‘other’ which we were always trying to shut out.”

— Sheldon Kopp in If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him!