Volume 20, nr. 2 (2002)
Editorial
Jan Art
Interior
Designs
Approaches to the Mind in the
Greco-Roman World [abstract]
[text]
Josine Blok
Commentary
on Josine Blok's:
Interior Designs
Approaches to the Mind in the
Greco-Roman World
Koenraad Verboven
Reply
to Koenraad Verboven's Comment
Josine Blok
Repression
in Antiquity? [abstract]
[text]
Charles Stewart
Commentary
on Charles Stewart's:
Repression in Antiquity?
Koenraad Verboven
Reply
to Commentators on
Repression in Antiquity?
Charles Stewart
Medieval
Dreams:
A Sample of Historical and
Psychoanalytical Criticism [abstract]
[text]
Rudi Künzel
Bertulf
or Galbert?
Considerations Regarding a Sample of
Historical and Psychoanalytical Criticism
Of Medieval Dreams [abstract]
[text]
Jeroen Deploige
Reply to Jeroen Deploige
Rudi Künzel
Purity
and Danger in Fin-de-Siècle Culture:
A Psychohistorical Interpretation of
Wagner, Stoker and Zola [abstract]
[text]
Arnold Labrie
Commentary
on Arnold Labrie's:
Purity and Danger in Fin-de-Siècle Culture
Jürgen Pieters
Reply
to Jürgen Pieters on
Purity and Danger in Fin-de-Siècle Culture
Arnold Labrie
Mentalitäten
des Politischen Katholizismus
in Österreich [abstract]
[text]
Eveline List
Freud
et l'affaire Haizmann
[abstract] [text]
Christian Renoux
Commentary
on Christian Renoux':
Freud et l'affaire Haizmann
Jürgen Pieters
Réponse
à Jürgen Pieters concernant
Freud et l'affaire Haizmann
Christian Renoux
Conclusions:
Applied Psychoanalysis
and Psychological History
Filip Geerardyn
ARCHIEFTEKST
De
destructie als oorzaak
van het worden [text]
Sabina Spielrein
Interior Designs. Approaches to the Mind in the Greco-Roman World
Josine Blok
Modern psychology is based on a conception of the human psyche as a faculty in its own right. Among its qualities is the psyche's natural propensity to operate semi-autonomously, acting according to rules of its own. Such a view of the human psyche as an active mechanism, however, did not exist for the greater part of the Greco-Roman world. The psyche (not to be identified with the soul) was perceived as a passive, receptive element, either materialistic (part of the body) or as an emptiness within the body to be filled by elements from outside. Given the radically distinct idea of the psyche in antiquity, one should ask whether, and if so how, the conceptual apparatus of modern psychology might be used fruitfully when dealing with ancient mental phenomena. And conversely, one may ask where the qualities and capacities, which modern psychology ascribes to the psyche, were located according to ancient views, and how they were supposed to operate. What was the ancient equivalent of psychology? For the majority of ancient Greeks and Romans, divine intervention was assumed to be responsible for what are now called psychological phenomena. In this context, the divine was not always considered sublime: the designs of the gods on man's interior were often troublesome – even fatal.
Key words: Paradigma, Psyche, Philosophy, Dreams, Magic.
Repression in Antiquity?
Charles Stewart
Freud made the assumption that the ancients were not repressed and this view is widespread today. This paper subjects this idea to critical scrutiny beginning with a consideration of what is understood by the term "repression" itself. Dreams are privileged as a means of flushing out repression. Rather than trying to interpret particular dream motifs as evidence of repression, I study ancient psychological ideas of how desires could be controlled. Erotic dreams posed problems of self-control and responsibility. The ancient Greeks viewed erotic dreams as problematic on medical grounds only if they occurred excessively whereas the early Christians sought to eliminate them entirely. Although these two different historical societies worried about the control of desire in different ways, and to varying degrees, I contend that repression could potentially arise in either case. An ethnographic example from the Brazilian Mehinaku illustrates this contention. Much of this study is technically concerned with suppression since people were proceeding consciously, but over time suppressive strategies become unconscious and qualify as full-blown repression. It could be said that repression is quintessentially a historical product.
Key words: Repression, Ancient Greece, Early Christianity, Asceticism, Psychoanalysis, Dreams, Erotic Dreams, Oedipus, Anthropology.
Medieval Dreams. A Sample of Historical and Psychological Criticism
Rudi Künzel
Accounts
of the contents of dreams in medieval texts can be the result of a process
that occurred in stages: first the dreaming, then the narrating and finally
the recording. First, someone dreams a dream. He remembers it and tells
it to himself as it were; then he tells someone else what he dreamt. The
other person writes it down. Occasionally other oral links occur in this
chain between the dreamer and the transcriber of the dream. Each stage
of this process contains elements that can affect whether the dream is
preserved or not and can also have a distorting effect on the original
contents of the dream. The mechanisms involved in this process are the
subject of this study.
Medieval texts also frequently contain passages that appear to describe
dreams but do not really do so; rather they are pure literary creations
or clichés. In this article a number of criteria for analyzing
texts containing dreams are developed using insights and techniques from
historical philology, cultural anthropology and psychoanalysis.
The standpoint I am defending is that although ideas about dreams change
in the course of time and from culture to culture, the mental activity
of dreaming is part of man's biological baggage and is thus a historical
constant.
Key words: Medieval Dreams, Recording of Dreams, Explanation of Dreams.
Bertulf or Galbert? Considerations Regarding a Sample of Historical and Psychoanalytical Criticism of Medieval Dreams
Jeroen Deploige
This is a review article on Rudi Künzel's proposed historical and psychoanalytical critique of medieval dreams. Firstly, the authenticity criteria proposed by Künzel are discussed critically. In particular, doubts are raised about an excessively strict distinction between oral and written culture. Next, a proposal is formulated to use psychoanalytical sensibility in the discourse analysis of other medieval narratives. Finally, some ideas are formulated with reference to an example from Galbert of Bruges' famous journal on the murder of the Count Charles the Good of Flanders in 1127.
Key words: Dreams, Middle Ages, Historical Criticism, Psychoanalysis, Künzel.
Purity and Danger in Fin-de-Siècle Culture: A Psycho historical Interpretation of Wagner, Stoker and Zola
Arnold Labrie
According to the anthropologist Mary Douglas, the quest for purity is usually accompanied by fears of change, ambiguity and transgression. Translating Douglas' insights into historical terms, one may assume that sensibilities about what is pure and what is impure will grow stronger during times of intense social and political change, for instance, during the stormy decades around 1900. This period was characterized by a profound identity-crisis and at the same time was marked by a quest for purity. One may think of a deepened concern for hygiene, of the rise of racist movements, but also of an intense longing for cultural reform and regeneration. Notwithstanding their many differences, these phenomena are linked through their concern for the formal distinction between what is pure and what is impure. A study of the work of Wagner, Bram Stoker and Zola gives some insight into the language of purity, serves to show the religious meaning of formal categories of purity and impurity, and makes it clear that the quest for purity in one area is related to the quest for purity in another area.
Key words: Psychohistory, Purity, Wagner, Dracula, Zola.
Mentalities of Political Catholicism in Austria
Eveline List
Taking the actual political situation in Austria as her starting point, the author provides a psychoanalytical inspired historical reflection. Traditionally, it was religion that structured the inner and outer world of people. It is argued that in Austria this was possible due to the combined powers of Church and Dynasty. For more than five hundred years the Catholic Church and the court of Habsburg cooperated with success in establishing a reciprocal assurance of power. This determined people to a high degree and marked political-institutional as well as psychosocial structures. It is argued that the mechanism of disavowal (Verleugnung) became a dominant mechanism of defence that upheld, far beyond World War I and the Third Reich, the myth of a special Austrian mission, to the price of a narrowed capacity to remember and a reduced perception of reality.
Key words: Psychoanalysis, Psychology of Religion, Disavowal, Counter Reformation, Habsburg, Austrian Fascism.
Freud and the Haizmann Affair
Christian Renoux
In 1923 Freud published an essay on the application of psychoanalysis to a case of demonic possession and liberation through exorcism in baroque Austria. For the psychoanalyst working with archival material, it is a matter of rediscovering neurotic ailments under a different rubric. According to Freud, the story of Christoph Haizmann clearly contains a truth which is dear to him, namely, the father conceived as devil. In this polemical text, aimed at Charcot's heirs, exorcists from the 17th century emerge as unexpected allies of Freud.
Key words:
Possession, Devil, Exorcism, Pact, Neurosis, Father Substitute.
