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New Testament ministration (Seelsorge) attempts to deal with conscious anxiety and guilt, psycho-analytic therapy with unconscious. In both cases suffering appears as a punishment for disobeying the command of an authority feared as severe (New Testament, God; Psychoanalysis, conscience or super-ego). In the New Testament sin and illness are fundamentally due to possession by demons. Freud sees the essential cause of illness in the id, which, like the demon, is spiritual or psychic, independent of consciousness. The New Testament and Psychoanalysis both replace an implacably severe commanding and punishing instance by a milder, benevolent supreme authority. This sublimation involves a regression from the severe parent imagos of the period of training to the benevolent ones of the premoral phase. In both New Testament and Psycho-Analysis the positive transference plays a decisive rôle, in that the mediator (analyst) is recognized on the one hand as the authoritative representative of the highest instance (God, ego-ideal), on the other hand as the representative of mankind.
The main differences are in primary aim, point of view, method of treatment, and topography. These differences do not imply contradictions, but the two tasks must not be mixed together. One cannot analyse and moralize at the same time; but neither must one analyse and 'immoralize' i.e., be negatively dogmatic. The New Testament contains so much psychological and psychotherapeutic knowledge that it shows presumption and ignorance to represent all religion simply as the product of wish-thinking.