ABSTRACT
Can you be too moral? Certainly, you can be too moralistic – a prude, a prig, a rigid stickler to rules, moral and otherwise. Equally, you can be too prone to perfectionism, irrational doubts, and anxiety, lacking the ability to cope well with these traits in various aspects of life – again, moral and otherwise. But is it possible either to have so much care or concern for morality or to have moral standards that are so high that you have a problem that may need psychiatric treatment? In their rich and nuanced paper, Jesse Summers and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong argue that, when a person has a condition called scrupulosity, it is appropriate to treat patients who exhibit too much moral care or concern, or whose moral standards are too high, even over their objections when certain conditions are met. This commentary aims to raise some questions about their characterisation of scrupulosity as a disorder involving, among other things, too much care or concern for morality or too high moral standards, and their arguments for the appropriateness of treatment over patients’ objections. But, in so doing, it also considers some of the broader connections between morality and psychiatry, bringing the monsters that lurk in the shadows of psychiatry to light.
