Preaching, teaching, prayer, confession and other traditional methods of dealing with the personal shadow are only partially successful because they focus exclusively on conscious attitudes.

In the last one hundred years, depth psychology has discovered that there are powerful unconscious motivations for evil behavior. This discovery is important, because it is easier to deal with evil that we understand than with behavior that seems incomprehensible. The more clearly we understand what is driving evil behavior, the better able we will be to help people deal with it, and the less likely we will be simply to tell people not to do it.

One of the insights of depth psychology is that the same behavior carried out by different people may have quite different unconscious sources. We cannot understand behavior without a grasp of these underpinnings.

Therefore, in a depth-psychological approach to spirituality, it is not sufficient simply to label certain behavior as "sinful"