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6. What Can Modern Psychoanalysts Learn from a Medieval “Psychoanalysis”?
- State University of New York Press
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The spirits in hell may be defined as those whose intellects have not discerned those good things which can truly nourish and fulfill them. That does not necessarily mean that they have lost the intellect itself: on the contrary, hell is full of very intelligent spirits. Often they are learned too, in philosophy and religion, things which should have availed to guide them. But knowledge may lie unused in the back of the mind, and the intellect, nimble though it may be, may be pushed off the track by forces both inside and outside the psyche; and then it gyrates futilely in the void. —Fergusson (1966, 103–104) As individuals age, and develop the various ailments that are concomitant to that state, their minds begin to turn toward death and the possibility of a second life after death. Some deal with this by manic denial, carrying on their lives as if they were adolescents, while others turn to more and more fundamentalist religion and even spend many hours in prayer and religious rituals. A somewhat different path is instead to be drawn once more in life to a study of Dante’s Divine Comedy.1 This incredible masterpiece cannot really be appreciated without a background in medieval philosophy, the works of Aristotle and Plato, Ptolemaic astronomy, medieval Catholic theology, and a considerable historical background into the minutiae of warring factions and papal squabbles and evils especially in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. But those who have repeatedly turned to Dante over the years will find themselves richly rewarded. Dante was a very great poet and master of the Italian language and he has a lot to teach psychoanalysts, as do most really great poets 103 6 What Can Modern Psychoanalysts Learn from a Medieval “Psychoanalysis”? and prose writers. Dante is the first medieval author to directly address common problems psychoanalysts still have to grapple with today. A vast literature has grown up trying to explain the complex theological, philosophical, and psychological allegories that are contained in this incredibly magnificent poem, but adding to that is not the purpose of this chapter. I need to warn the reader, however, before proceeding, that The Divine Comedy is addicting! Once one begins to study it, one finds it is almost impossible to stop since there are so many ramifications and implications in every part. There is so much emotional and intellectual appeal in various directions that one is drawn like a magnet to going back to it over and over again during a lifetime. As T. S. Eliot (1950) put it, “If you get nothing out of it at first, you probably never will; but if from your first deciphering of it there comes now and then some direct shock of poetic intensity, nothing but laziness can deaden the desire for fuller and fuller knowledge” (200). Fergusson (1966) explains that the proper way to read The Divine Comedy is to “linger over each canto, until one sees its unique life, or action, in every detail” (109). The purpose of this chapter, however, is to review some of Dante’s psychological ideas in The Divine Comedy, examine Dante’s medieval concept of a cure of the soul, which is extraordinarily similar to the goals of psychoanalysis in its procedures, and to introduce some of the remarkable characters whom Dante portrays in his Divine Comedy. For, in addition to everything else, Dante was a psychologist of remarkable perspicuity and almost in spite of himself had a sensitivity and empathy with conflicted and damaged individuals . In fact at times his empathic countertransference clashed with his rigid Catholic superego and this conflict becomes repeatedly manifested in the poem, as I hope to explain and discuss as relevant to contemporary psychoanalysis . I should add that it is not at all sufficient to read the Inferno, the most popular section of Dante’s poem. Doing only that is like listening to the first movement of a symphony, and one can no more judge Dante’s purpose from reading only the Inferno then one can understand what will happen in a chess game from just knowing the opening moves. The Divine Comedy is an intricately structured masterpiece which rests on the foundation of the Inferno but has as its ultimate aim the cure of a troubled soul. The ultimate therapist is Dante himself, just as the patient or troubled soul is also Dante. Under the guidance of Virgil, then Beatrice, and finally St. Bernard, who function as a psychoanalyst might...