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“All the healthy and out-going activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so that at least he may say, as one of my own patients said on his arrival down here, ‘I now that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked.”

This quotation occurs in the twelfth letter as Screwtape is advising Wormwood to keep the Patient only half-conscious of his guilt. Screwtape is a hedonist. This means that he believes pleasure is the most important pursuit in the universe. At the same time, Screwtape is a sadist—he takes pleasure in the suffering of others. The thing that gives Screwtape the most pleasure, then, is exerting his power over others and depriving them of the possibility to experience pleasure for themselves. Screwtape encourages Wormwood to assume this same attitude concerning humans. It is not enough for Screwtape that humans be sinners, they must also be miserable. Tempting the Patient into lust and sexual exploits will not, in the end, make the Patient happy. Instead, the Patient will begin to feel guilty. He will avoid prayer and the other Christian pursuits that, in the world of The Screwtape Letters, are the only real means for finding happiness. Then Wormwood will not have to give the Patient any pleasure in order to lead him into sin. The Patient will avoid God because confronting his guilt is unpleasant, and the Patient’s feeling of guilt will keep him from pursuing other pleasures.

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