Seven Deadly Sins

The seven deadly sins; pride, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, avarice, and sloth, are all symptoms of inflation. By being labelled sins, which require confession and penance, the individual is protected against them.

Edinger reinterprets the Seven Deadly Sins as psychological symptoms of ego-inflation, arguing that their religious classification as sins serves the depth-psychological function of keeping the ego in proper relation to the Self.

Edinger, Edward F., Ego and Archetype: Individuation and the Religious Function of the Psyche, 1972thesis

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They can be put under the normal human failings of the seven deadly sins of pride, greed, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth. This list may illuminate underlying common factors, such as threats to financial security and self-esteem that may trigger drinking.

McCabe applies the Seven Deadly Sins schema directly to the Jungian shadow inventory in the AA Fourth Step, treating the classical list as a practical diagnostic grid for uncovering the unconscious drivers of addiction.

McCabe, Ian, Carl Jung and Alcoholics Anonymous: The Twelve Steps as a Spiritual Journey of Individuation, 2015thesis

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One thing that makes these sins so deadly is that they are not always recognizable on the basis of overt action. Often these sins can even appear to be virtues. To identify and combat them in oneself is difficult.

Nichols, reading the Seven Deadly Sins through the Tarot Devil archetype, emphasizes their psychological subtlety — their capacity to masquerade as virtues — making them a paradigm case of shadow dynamics.

Nichols, Sallie, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, 1980thesis

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For someone seeking perfection, envy is one of the seven deadly sins and is to be rigorously avoided, but for someone seeking completion, which is the goal of individuation, envy is evidence that something is lacking.

Edinger draws a decisive distinction between the perfection-oriented moral theology underlying the Seven Deadly Sins and the completion-oriented logic of individuation, arguing that what counts as sin in one framework becomes a diagnostic signal in the other.

Edinger, Edward F., The Psyche in Antiquity, Book One: Early Greek Philosophy From Thales to Plotinus, 1999thesis

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This list was taken over later and adapted by Cassian to produce the familiar seven deadly sins. Categorizing and naming the swarm of passions that afflict the psyche was important to the Fathers of the Philokalia, since it was a precious tool of discernment.

Coniaris traces the historical derivation of the Seven Deadly Sins from Evagrian monastic psychology through Cassian, framing the taxonomy as a contemplative instrument for discernment rather than a purely juridical moral code.

Coniaris, Anthony M., Philokalia: The Bible of Orthodox Spirituality, 1998supporting

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Evagrius' disciple, St. John Cassian, transmitted this list of the eight 'thoughts' to the West, but made one change in the sequence... Further changes were made by St. Gregory the Great.

The Ladder of Divine Ascent documents the genealogical transmission of Evagrius's eight logismoi through Cassian into Gregory's canonical seven, establishing the historical substrate from which the Western tradition of Deadly Sins emerged.

Climacus, John, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, 600supporting

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The Seven were regarded as hermaphroditic demons and as the cause of propagation, and consequently of death and the seven deadly sins.

Von Franz situates the Seven Deadly Sins within a Gnostic-alchemical cosmological framework, linking them to planetary demonic figures and the symbolism of the heptad as a psycho-mythological inheritance.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, Aurora Consurgens: A Document Attributed to Thomas Aquinas on the Problem of Opposites in Alchemy, 1966supporting

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Evagrius called these traps logismos — thoughts that bewilder and befog the mind so that slowly, bit by bit, we drift away into a world of self-destructive fantasy.

Kurtz traces the precursor concept to the Seven Deadly Sins in Evagrius's doctrine of the logismoi, presenting the classical taxonomy as originating in a psychological phenomenology of distorted cognition rather than in moral legislation.

Kurtz, Ernest, Ketcham, Katherine, The Spirituality of Imperfection Storytelling and the, 1994supporting

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various texts on the seven deadly sins (ff. 159v-186v); Aesop's Fables in quatrains, based on the Romulus (ff. 189-210), late thirteenth–early fourteenth century

Campbell briefly notes the Seven Deadly Sins as a textual category within a medieval manuscript collection, situating them within the broader iconographic and didactic literature of the period without direct psychological commentary.

Campbell, Joseph, Creative Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume IV, 1968aside

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