Psicologia e Psichiatria nelle Cause Matrimoniali Canoniche by Gianfranesco Zuanazzi (review)

cally conditioned commentary of the manualists are fascinating. Although the average canon law student will probably not seek this work out nor find it of much use, historians, doctoral students, professors and such would certainly find a place for this monograph in their bibliographies and libraries. John G. Proctor, Jr. Murphy Canyon Chapel Naval Station San Diego San Diego, California PSICOLOGIA E PSICHIATRIA NELLE CAUSE MATRIMONIALI CANONICHE by Gianfranesco Zuanazzi. Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2006. This is an impressive volume. Archbishop Stankiewicz, the Dean of the Rota, has, in the Presentation of the book, called it the crowning achievement of the author’s professional life. The author, Professor Gianfrancesco Zuanazzi, served for many years as the chief psychiatrist and director of a psychiatric institute, and also for many years both as a peritus at the Rota and as a professor in the Studio Rotale. This book, which is a scientific reworking of his lectures at the Studio Rotale, will now be regarded as the definitive textbook or manual on the utilization of psychology and psychiatry in marriage cases. The book is fittingly included in the distinguished Studi Giuridici series published by the Vatican Press. The book consists of four parts and a conclusion, followed by a twenty-three page bibliography plus another twenty pages or so of indexes of both names and subjects. Part I (54 pages) is a kind of overview or mini course in the basic concepts of psychology and the differences of various authors regarding views of those concepts. Among the topics discussed are the difference between the human being and the animal, the nature of a person and of personality, the experience of being free, determinism, the corporality of the human person, relationships, being in the world, space, time, normality , pathology and the line between health and illness. A few of the authors whose positions are discussed are: Freud, Jaspers, Allport, Jung, Binswanger, Nuttin and, perhaps most favorably, Philipp Lersch. 516 the jurist book reviews 517 Part II (119 pages) is entitled “Psychological and Psychiatric Aspects of Matrimonial Consent.” In the first sixty pages or so of this section (Chapters III, IV and V) the author offers a systemic step-by-step explanation of the elements involved in matrimonial consent itself and of what constitutes incapacity for that consent. The author begins, understandably , with the will, noting Gehlen’s statement that “the human being is essentially a being that wills.” The nature of the factors, both conscious and unconscious, that move or motivate people to make the decisions they do, is discussed at length with repeated emphasis on the importance of both awareness and freedom in the decision making process, that is to say, the process of willing or of making choices. Love, the most common motive in choosing marriage, does not, says the author, deprive people of awareness or freedom. Quite the contrary. The fact is that the axiom “Love is blind” is often misleading and needs to be balanced with statements such as that of St. Augustine who said, “only love is capable of seeing” and that of Lersch who pointed out that “the one who does not love knows nothing.” When the author arrives at canon 1095 regarding those who “are incapable of contracting marriage,” he insists, of course, on the critical distinction between incapacity and difficulty. At the same time, however, he disagrees with Rulla’s position that incapacity applies only to cases involving psychoses, very severe narcissism, and certain sexual disturbances and deviations but not to neuroses, personality disorders , or “borderlines.” According to Zuanazzi, whenever the disturbance is serious in that it produces serious effects, then that condition, whatever its nosographic label, can cause consensual incapacity in that it can deprive the person of the level of awareness and freedom required for a person to give marital consent. That is not to say, of course, that a specific diagnosis cannot be extremely helpful to a judge, and in the last sixty or so pages of part II (chapter VI) the author discusses twenty-one specific disorders that might, depending upon their severity, affect marital consent. Using both DSM IV (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric...