Addressing or dismissing the anxieties of conscience: is this the purview of medical science? Or of other therapy?

In our time (this is truth, and it is significant for the Christianity of our time), in our time it is the physician who exercises the cure of souls. People have perhaps an unfounded dread of calling in the parson, who, however, in our time would talk possibly pretty much like the physician. So they call in the physician. And he knows what to do: [Dr.]: “You must travel to a watering-place, and then keep a riding-horse, for it is possible to ride away from bees in the bonnet, and then diversion, diversion, plenty of diversion, you must ensure yourself of having every evening a cheerful game of poker, on the other hand you should not eat much in the evening directly before going to bed, and finally see that the bedroom is well aired – this will surely help.” – [Patient]: “To relieve an anxious conscience?” – [Dr.]: “Bosh! Get out with that stuff! An anxious conscience! No such thing exists any more, it is a reminiscence of the childhood of the race. There is no enlightened and cultivated person who would think of coming out with such a thing – I mean to say, outside of the Sunday service, which is a different matter. No, let us never begin here with an anxious conscience, for thus we might soon turn the whole house into a madhouse. I am so minded that if I had in my employ a servant, however excellent in other respects, whom I should be loath to lose and should greatly miss – if I observed that he or she were meddling with the experience on an anxious conscience, I would give unconditional notice to quit my service. That would be the last thing I would tolerate in my house. If it were my own child, he would have to seek other quarters.” – [Patient]: “But, Doctor, this is an awfully anxious dread of a thing which you say does not exist, ‘an anxious conscience’; one might almost thing that is a revenge upon you for wanting to do away with anguish of conscience – this anxious dread of yours is indeed like a revenge!”

Søren Kierkegaard, Judge for Yourselves!, excerpted in Parables of Kierkegaard, trans. W. Lowrie and H. and E. Hong