At 07:05 PM 3/22/00 -0800, you wrote:
>This raises a very interesting question about just how different
>psychologically we are - if at all - from folks in different ages.
>Psychology was "invented" recently, but the psyche wasn't. Weren't
>acedia and tristitia forms of the "blues," or depression?
i think there are significant differences, altho not fundamental or radical.
certainly medieval culture tended to deal with these things differently. just
because we use drug cocktails for everything that ails us and our children
doesn't mean we have a better understanding of these psychological phenomena,
it just means that we favor different (typically externally manipulative)
options. on the other hand, i do think that we have far more insulated and
independent egos, that make some experiences that were more or less typical of
people in medieval culture rarer today; and, directly related to that, the
cultural atmosphere in which psychic phenomena occur has a great deal to do
with how they are experienced and understood.
as for Catherine or any other "saints" and their "neuroses" -- obviously
there's a cultural difference here, not only in the way that catherine
expressed her psychological conflicts, but also in the forms of behavior that
were considered acceptable in the larger culture (eg use of force in gender
conflict; the unthinkability of healthy sexuality as part of spiritual
fulfillment). so while neurotic is a useless term to use to label her, it can,
if one considers carefully the changes in the larger framework, mutatis
mutandis, offer some help in understanding what kind of person she was/might
have been in our times.
ps. if you want an interesting case closer to home, check out Sojourner Truth,
a black slave who went from millenarian groupie to feminist in the mid-19th
century.
rlandes
Richard Landes
Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University Department of History
704 Commonwealth Ave. Suite 205 226 Bay State Road
Boston MA 02215 Boston MA 02215
617-358-0226 of 358-0225 fax 617-353-2558 of 353-2556 fax
http://www.mille.org [log in to unmask]
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