Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light is already No. 3 on the Amazon nonfiction bestseller list even though the book's official publication date is not until next week. The collection of her letters, edited by the Reverend Brian Kolodiejchuk (one of the chief promoters of Teresa for sainthood) reveals an inner life that belongs in a psychology textbook. I have no doubt that excerpts from the letters will appear in future case studies of well-known individuals who combine masochism with narcissism.

In 1951, Teresa wrote that Jesus's crucifixion was the only aspect of his life that compelled her. "I want to drink ONLY," she emphasized, "from His chalice of pain." In another letter, she declared, "I want to love Jesus as he has never been loved before." What is striking about both statements is their vanity and self-centeredness. The book might better be titled, Stalking Jesus.

Yet Teresa began to doubt Jesus's love--and the very existence of God--almost as soon as she began her ministry to the poor of Calcutta in 1948. "So many unanswered questions live with me afraid to uncover them -- because of blasphemy -- if there be a God --please forgive me...I am told that God loves me -- and yet the reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul."

Of course, all people--religious or nonreligious--have doubts about their beliefs. And I would think that someone who observes extreme human suffering on a daily basis would have more doubts than most about the existence of a benevolent deity. But what is striking about Teresa's doubt is that it is all about her: it has nothing to do with the dissonance between belief in a loving God and the suffering she sees. She is concerned about the destiny of Teresa.

"If I ever become a Saint," she wrote, "I will surely be one of `darkness.' I will continually be absent from Heaven--to [light] the light of those in darkness on earth." Then she declared, "I am willing to suffer...for all eternity, if this [is] possible." She is going to outdo Christ himself.

In a reverential and sanctimonious cover story in last week's issue of Time magazine, psychonanalysts and priests are quoted. Guess what? Both the shrinks and the reverends think that Teresa is even holier because of her overwhelming doubts. Father Kolodiejchuk, of course, thinks Teresa's pain only enhances her saintly credentials. (She has already been beatified.) Dr. Richard Gottlieb, of the New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute, said of Teresa's doubt, "What is remarkable is that she integrates it in a way that enabled her to make it the ongoing center of her personality, the beacon for her ongoing spiritual life." As a psychiatrist should know, all sorts of disturbed people are adept at making dubious premises and outright delusions the organizing centers of their personalities.

The agreement of priests and psychoanalysts is not, after all, very surprising. Both Freudian psychoanalysis and Roman Catholicisms are faiths whose central tenets have nothing to do with evidence. What does a rational person, as opposed to someone who has a deep need to believe in the unprovable or the obviously false, do when doubt raises its insistent head?

When a rational human being is confronted by evidence that contradicts his or her beliefs, then the belief must be modified. Many classically trained Freudian anlaysts, for example, no longer believe in the theory of "penis envy" that was the product of a 19th-century society in which women were considered inferior to men in every way. These analysts have altered their views to accommodate the fact that much of what Freud considered innate in women was the product of a society in which women were systematically denied all of the worldly opportunities available to men.

An irrational person--let us say, for the sake of argument, someone dedicated to becoming a saint who suffers for eternity--refuses to acknowledge that there may be good reasons for her doubts. And she may, like Teresa, redouble her efforts to present a saintly and smiling face to the world--to show herself in public as the embodiment of a love she does not experience in private.

So we come to the Mother Teresa who accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979--after having done nothing at all to further the cause of peace. (That of course does not make her unique among Nobel peace prize recipients. After all, Henry Kissinger also received the Nobel for his wonderful works in southeast Asia.)

In her Nobel acceptance speech in Oslo, Teresa declared, "Abortion is the worst evil, and the greatest enemy of peace...Because if a mother can kill her own child, what will prevent us from killing ourselves or one another? Nothing." A woman who considers abortion the greatest enemy of world peace has no business lecturing anyone about the importance of loving one's neighbor.

Teresa was also a tireless crusader against contraceptives. That one of the causes (and results) of poverty is having too many children seems never to have entered her muddled brain.

These creepy letters, notable for their joylessness as well as their narcissism, are entirely consistent with Teresa's works, which amounted to putting band-aids on sores rather than attempting to fight poverty itself. It is obviously a good thing to but band-aids on sores, but doing the job does not make you a saint or even a particularly fine human being.

Teresa raised millions from right-wing Catholic donors (including Charles Keating, who robbed thousands of his fellow Americans in the savings and loan scandals of the early 1990s). Her "Home for the Dying" in Calcutta provided no modern medical care--not even modern painkillers--for the terminally ill. Indeed, Teresa's true mission seems to have been the glorification of suffering. Perhaps the most psychologically revealing statement in her letters is that she was interested only in Jesus's passion. The amiable Jesus who changed water into wine to please his mother at a wedding held no interest for her. Jesus seems to have enjoyed making people happy, which I have always considered a great point in his favor in comparison to certain other gloomy prophets.

Teresa never showed any concern, in India or elsewhere, about the root causes of poverty--including lack of education, corrupt dictatorships, inequitable distribution of wealth, bigotry against social, ethnic, or religious underclasses, and contempt for women.

In his 1995 book The Missionary Position, Christopher Hitchens chronicles Teresa's political activities, which included allying herself with die-hard right-wingers fighting the construction of a secular democracy in Spain after Francisco Franco's death and support for the corrupt and violent Duvalier regime in Haiti.

The author of the Time article, David Van Biema, concludes his hagiography, leavened only by a few token quotes from Hitchens, with the following paragraph:

"The particularly holy are no less prone than the rest of us to misjudge the workings of history--or, if you will, of God's providence. Teresa considered the perceived absence of God in her life as her most shameful secret but eventually learned that it could be seen as a gift abetting her calling. If her worries about publicizing it also turn out to be misplaced--if a book of hasty, troubled notes turns out to ease the spiritual road of thousands of fellow believers, there would be no shame in having been wrong--but happily, even wonderfully wrong--twice."

Well, mindlessness marches on. Let us leave aside the question of whether anyone who contemplates the prospect of future sainthood while protesting her unworthiness can be considered "particularly holy." It has been my observation that people who are true beacons of human goodness in this life--whether they are religious believers or not--spend very little time contemplating what the next world has in store for them.

One of the salutary results of the publication of Teresa's letters is that they offer a reminder of how nonsensical the concept of sainthood really is. The Catholic Church's elevation of flawed human beings to the status of special interecessors with God would have been reason enough for the Reformation. Human beings are only human beings--in whatever proportions they mix good and evil.

But I am certain that this book will become a bestseller and that, with a push from a few more bogus miracle cures reported by people who pray to her, Teresa will move onto the fast track for sainthood.

As a man who was able to differentiate between reality and illusion once said, there's a sucker born every minute.