The Protestant Ethic against the spirit of psychiatry: the other side of Weber's thesis.

This paper will attempt to present an encounter between the people-changing sciences and the Protestant Ethic. The term psychotherapy will be used here to refer to all professional treatment systems aimed at changing people. The central point of this paper is to argue that the inhumane treatment of deviants practiced in Europe from the 16th to the 19th century was imbedded in the belief in predestination and dualism, which was revived and sharpened by John Calvin during the 16th century and which grew to become a major influence in Europe during the centuries to follow. According to Calvin, people are not all created with a similar destiny; but eternal life is foreordained for some, and eternal damnation for others. Those who belong to the elect were predestined to have symptoms of righteousness, while the damned were born with the unchangeable symptoms of wickedness. According to Calvin there are two factors by which man can prove that he was of the elect or rather how did he rid himself of the fear of damnation--calling and constant striving for perfection in one's work. It was on this basis of these two factors that Max Weber developed his thesis regarding the relationship between the Protestant Ethic and the rise of the modern capitalism.