Screwtape's Strategies: Manipulation and Distortions

Screwtape advises Wormwood not to engage his patient in reasoning, but to deaden his mind with jargon and distractions. Thought about things beyond human experience is to be discouraged by any means necessary. Screwtape notes that Wormwood’s patient has become a professing Christian, but tells his nephew not to give up hope. Many have been turned away, he notes, by focusing on the flaws and peculiarities of Christians rather than on Christ himself. As long as the patient somehow thinks of himself as a good person, he can easily be persuaded that those he sees in church are hypocrites because of their imperfections. In the next letter, Screwtape advises Wormwood about how to use his subject’s relationship with his mother to the advantage of

He continues to talk about love, noting that either the acceptance or the rejection of “falling in love” can be useful as long as the subject focuses on himself. Best of all would be if Wormwood could convince his subject to marry a young woman in the neighborhood who would make it really difficult for him to continue to pursue his life as a Christian. Though the Enemy has put a stop to Wormwood’s direct assaults upon his subject’s virtue, Screwtape advises that he pursue a course of putting into his mind false expectations concerning women. Shallow concepts of beauty can go a long way toward convincing the young man to marry the wrong sort of woman, who would then be devastating to his spiritual life. Screwtape here advises Wormwood to cultivate in his subject a sense of victimhood in the light of minor inconveniences. Above all, he must learn to think of his time as his own, which he in turn grudgingly gives up to his job or magnanimously gives up to the activities of his church. He must also be taught to think of his body as something that belongs to him; by no means should the idea that all he has and is belongs to the Enemy be allowed to enter his mind. Apparently Wormwood’s subject has found a girlfriend, and Screwtape is furious, since she is a chaste and modest Christian girl from a Christian family. Furthermore, Wormwood had informed the Secret Police of Screwtape’s indiscretions in an earlier letter. In this epistle, Screwtape can’t make up his mind whether to rage more about the love relationship or about Wormwood’s perfidy. He goes so far as to threaten Wormwood with words about the House of Correction for Incompetent Tempters, but in his fury he suddenly turns into a centipede and winds up dictating the rest of the letter to his secretary Toadpipe. The subject’s new girlfriend has introduced him to many other Christians who are intelligent and