Moral morbidness

An unusually depressed state may arise with respect to moral or religious status. This may be true insanity, or it may be a state in which the sane person (often an adolescent) comes under some moral distortion. Examples are: introspection that applies excessively severe standards to one's self as opposed to others; obsessive emphasis on exact performance of trifles appearing as duties, with expectation of perfect behaviour in the self and others; compelling, and what the person himself admits are unreasonable, demands for certitude and refusal to make assumptions; excessively emotional or self-annihilating devotion to an ideal, a cause, or another person; extreme under-sensitivity and callousness. In all but the last case, the state has been shown to arise in sensitive people unable to assimilate gloomy theological theories which the more robust may profess to believe while leading normally happy or humdrum lives.