Merton’s Melancholia: Mother,Monasticism, and the Religion of Honor

In this first of several successive articles on Thomas Merton, the author interprets Merton’s vocational call, identity conflicts, and radical asceticism in light of the psychoanalytic study of Donald Capps, Erik Erikson, and Sigmund Freud. The author argues that Merton’s early identity and religious development formed deep conflicts in his psyche. These conflicts remained unconscious and unresolved, leading to disastrous consequences. This article examines Merton’s life until his affair with Margie Smith in 1966.     

Merton’s Melancholia: Margie,Monasticism, and the Religion of Hope

In this second successive essay on Merton’s melancholia, the author argues that the period of Merton’s romantic involvement with Margie Smith reflects a desire on Merton’s part to adopt the religion of hope. The author argues that this period of romantic involvement was especially taxing on Merton. In this period, the author argues that Merton developed a conflicted understanding of the Christian God, which manifested itself in confusion over sexual matters and vocational matters among others. Finally, the author points to numerous instances in which the Roman Catholic Church exacerbated Merton’s existing problems.     

Gaze,dominance and humiliation in the Schreber case1

In this paper the author reviews Freud's study of Schreber's Memoirs and the Memoirs themselves from a perspective of nearly 100 years. He argues that Schreber's illness began as a melancholic depression but quickly developed paranoid features which subsequently escalated into a gross paranoia which nevertheless retained its depressive and hypochondriacal base. Finally the chaotic fragmentation became organized under the dominance of an omnipotent narcissistic organisation which led to a clinical improvement without any relinquishment of his delusional beliefs. As a subsidiary theme he examines the role of gaze in Schreber's object relations and argues that gaze was used to project into his objects, then to scrutinise the object to see if the projections had been received and tolerated, and finally as an expression of dominance. His urgent demand for relief provoked an omnipotence in his objects which he was then able triumphantly to frustrate and which ushered in a struggle over dominance in the course ofwhich Schreber was abused and humiliated. He was unable to find an object who could contain his distress and these factors contributed to the failure to tolerate guilt and to work through his depression.     

NO WEREWOLVES IN THEOLOGY? TRANSCENDENCE,IMMANENCE, AND BECOMING‐DIVINE IN GILLES DELEUZE

This essay adds a theological voice to the current debate over the legacy of Gilles Deleuze. It discusses Peter Hallward's charge that Deleuze is best read as a mystical, theophanic philosopher who values creativity to the detriment of real creatures. It argues that while Hallward is right to discern a flight from bodies, relations, and politics in Deleuze, this is due not to Deleuze's contemplative mysticism, but rather to his strident rejection of any transcendence. The essay then draws upon Thomas Merton in order to argue that only a fully contemplative engagement with transcendence allows us to save the sort of radical becoming that Deleuze sought but couldn't achieve.     

Singing the Blues: Reflections on African American Men,the Emergence of Melancholic Selves,and the Search for Transformational Objects

This article examines the texts of four African American men—Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., James Baldwin, and Ta-Nehisi Coates—arguing that each text reflects, in part, the emergence of a melancholic self. This melancholic self arises as a result of internalizing the ubiquitous negative projections that come from social, political, economic, and cultural institutions or disciplinary regimes and the attending narratives that support, foster, and enforce racist beliefs (e.g., White superiority, Black inferiority). The internalization of negative projections, I contend, means that some Black children struggle to discover a positive sense of self in the public realm, and it is this ongoing encounter that gives rise to a melancholic faith wherein the child can expect not fidelity, trust, and hope vis-à-vis the public realm but rather betrayal, distrust, and futility vis-à-vis the possibility of the world ever presenting to him a positive self. In these texts, each man also identifies a moment in his early life when he became conscious of racist projections and the accompanying humiliations, as well as of the presence and power of his melancholic self. At the same time, this awareness, which is the first step in redemptive resistance, initiates a search for a transformational “object” that will liberate him from being in bondage to the melancholic self and its accompanying racial logic and faith, which, in turn, transforms his agency.     

Mystics and Sufi masters: Thomas Merton and dialogue between Christians and Muslims

The Cistercian, Trappist monk Thomas Merton (1915–1968), author of numerous books on Christian spirituality, monasticism and social commentary, was a forerunner in popular inter‐religious dialogue in the twentieth century. In this connection, he is best known for his sympathetic explorations of themes from Asian religions, particularly Zen and other forms of Buddhism. This article calls attention to his studies in Islam, initially under the guidance of Louis Massignon (1883–1962), and particularly in Sufism. It highlights his interactions with a number of contemporary Muslim thinkers, and describes his decade‐long correspondence with a Pakistani Muslim student of Sufi texts, a unique instance of a sustained dialogue in letters on religious themes between a Muslim and a Christian in modern times. The article also calls attention to the ways in which Merton took inspiration from Islamic sources in the development of his own spiritual teaching.     

The transformation of intercorporeality in melancholia

In this article the author seeks to highlight a specific disorder related to bodily experience in melancholia conceived as a severe form of clinical depression. The article is divided into three parts. In the first section, the author investigates the intersubjective dimension of bodily experience in light of the categories of Außen- and Innenleiblichkeit. In the second section, I explore a specific disturbance of the dimension of intercorporeality. The excessive feeling of the bodily (außenleibliche) visibility of his/her own sufferance is a fundamental aspect of depression. At a pre-reflexive level, we constantly assume the noncoincidence between one's own bodily expression and the Other's experience/reading of these expressions. An alteration of this (pre-reflexive) awareness occurs in melancholia. The patient feels as if the melancholic condition would be transparent to the other. In the third section, the author intends to show the alteration of the embodied communication between the melancholic person and the other investigating two particular phenomena: the exchange of gaze in a face to face encounter, and the disturbance of the oral sense, revealing a specific form of irresponsiveness and the experience of void.     

THE THREAD OF DEPRESSION THROUGHOUT THE LIFE AND WORKS OF LEO TOLSTOY

Tolstoy, the author of two masterpieces, War and Peace and Anna Karenina , remains a writer of genius. Yet, after writing War and Peace , his existence had been torn apart by a serious depression. This depression, which was melancholic in character, almost destroyed him and, once he had finished Anna Karenina , led him to want to renounce not only sexuality but also literary creation and material possessions. Through examining Tolstoy's life and work, the author tries to uncover the underground paths of this depression, which emerged brutally in the middle of his life, and to understand why his creative genius dried up. Like Leonardo da Vinci, Tolstoy turned away from his artistic work, declaring that 'art is not only useless but even harmful', and thereafter devoted himself to philosophical, political and religious writings. These new sublimations would help him to recover his health.     

The Mother Relationship and Artistic Inhibition in the Lives of Leonardo da Vinci and Erik H. Erikson

In four earlier articles, I focused on the theme of the relationship of melancholia and the mother, and suggested that the melancholic self may experience humor (Capps, 2007a), play (Capps, 2008a), dreams (Capps, 2007c), and art (Capps, 2008b) as restorative resources. I argued that Erik H. Erikson found these resources to be valuable remedies for his own melancholic condition, which had its origins in the fact that he was illegitimate and was raised solely by his mother until he was three years old, when she remarried. In this article, I focus on two themes in Freud’s Leonardo da Vinci and a memory of his childhood (1964): Leonardo’s relationship with his mother in early childhood and his inhibitions as an artist. I relate these two themes to Erikson’s own early childhood and his failure to achieve his goal as an aspiring artist in his early twenties. The article concludes with a discussion of Erikson’s frustrated aspirations to become an artist and his emphasis, in his psychoanalytic work, on children’s play. Donald Capps is Professor of Pastoral Psychology at Princeton Theological Seminary. His books include Men, Religion, and Melancholia (1997), Freud and Freudians on Religion (2001), and Men and Their Religion: Honor, Hope, and Humor     

John Dewey and the savage mind: uniting anthropological, psychological, and pedagogical thought, 1894-1902

In 1902 influential American philosopher John Dewey wrote a short essay on anthropolo-gists'view of the savage mind, arguing that it had had been unfairly dismissed as inchoate and incapable, when in fact the savage had much to teach scholars about the "present mind." The ideas presented in Dewey's essay were not only theoretical; they also served as the basis for his entire curriculum his famous laboratory school at the University of Chicago. Thus, the author argues that Dewey's pedagogical thought informed his anthropological thought, and vice versa.     

Forgiveness, acceptance and the matter of expectation

In this paper, the author argues for a dynamic conceptualization of forgiveness during psychoanalysis. The trauma of failed expectations in intimate relationships is narcissistically dislodging. When legitimate expectations in relationships are not met, forgiveness becomes a challenge for ego to restore the lost narcissistic balance through the resumption of a significant internal bond. The author argues that the ending of any successful analysis is marked by three possibilities regarding the patient's relationship to significant others and his traumas: in cases where the relationship was marked by minimal expectations, one simply learns to accept the wrongdoer without ever feeling the need for forgiveness; in cases where a relationship was marked by high expectations, the patient can learn to accept the trauma without the will or need to forgive its perpetrator. However, even with the painful frustration of high expectations in an intimate relationship, the patient can come to forgive his wrongdoer if there remains enough of a positive internal bond to be salvaged. The developmental roots of such forgiveness, as well as the addictive characteristics of 'nursing a grudge' and the conversion of the qualitative mode of seeking fulfillment into a quantitative one, are further investigated.     

Denigrating Carl Rogers: William Coulson's Last Crusade

This article reviews William Coulson's assertions that Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow, and he initiated the humanistic education field, that Rogers repudiated his philosophy late in life, and that they owe the nation's parents an apology. The author argues that these charges are groundless and self-serving and provides examples and quotations from Rogers's later writings to show how Rogers remained constant to his basic person-centered beliefs until his death.     

Pierre Hadot on Habit,Reason, and Spiritual Exercises

This essay is a reappraisal of Pierre Hadot's concept of spiritual exercises in response to recent criticisms of his work. The author argues that contrary to the claims of his critics, Hadot articulates a compelling argument that spiritual exercises that employ imaginative, rhetorical, and cognitive techniques are both necessary for and successful at producing a subject in which reason is integrated into human character. Such exercises are critical for overcoming the effects of habit, as a result of which everyday conduct resists rational control, and Hadot provides a nuanced account of how particular practices affect different aspects of emotion, behavior, and thought. The concept of spiritual exercises remains a viable component of theoretical frameworks for the study of religious ethics, though the author concludes that Hadot's position on habit and its role in ethical practice requires further investigation.     

‘Though he slay me,yet will I trust in him’: a critical reconstruction of Winnicott's theory of value

This paper extrapolates an outline for a theory of value from Winnicott's reflections on war in ‘Discussion of war aims’ (1940). The author treats Winnicott's discussion as an occasion for a critical reconstruction of his theory of life‐values. He discerns an implicit set of distinctions in Winnicott's reflections on war, including different orders of value (existential, ethical, and psychosocial); a distinction between maturity and necessity; and a yet more fundamental distinction between violence and brutality. The paper argues, on the basis of these distinctions, that Winnicott allows for an understanding of one's encounter with the enemy as an ethical relation. The main argument of the paper is that the ethical attitude underpins recognition of the enemy's humanity. On a more critical note, the author argues that Winnicott doesn't adhere consistently to the ethical attitude he presupposes, that in certain passages he privileges the maturity of combatants over the humanity of the enemy.     

Of words,tools, and actions

The author rejects Leon Galis's claim (Inquiry, Vol. II, No. 2) that in ‘Of Words and Tools’ (Inquiry, Vol. 10, No. 2) he attacks a form of the ‘use’ theory of meaning that no one has held. Galis's other claim, that the author criticizes a needlessly weak form of the theory, is found to be justified, but the author argues that his procedure was adequate, and parallel to that oi Galis's own reconstruction of the ‘use’ theory in terms of ‘goal‐directed action’. Difficulties in this reconstruction are pointed out, and some meta‐semantic issues about theories of meaning raised.     

‘THEY KNOW HIM BY HIS VOICE’: NEWMAN ON THE IMAGINATION,CHRISTOLOGY, AND THE THEOLOGY OF RELIGIONS

Newman's gift to Catholic theology is the gift of ‘wisdom’: an ability to discern the shape of the whole, not by way of ‘generalized laws or metaphysical conjectures’ but through the ‘concrete’ and ‘living’ soil of the religious imagination. Newman's elemental trust in the religious sensibilities of non‐Christians and the revelatory roots of ‘natural religion’ proceeds from his view of the religious imagination as the experiential, pre‐verbal, and pre‐conceptual realm of contact between God and human persons always and everywhere. Above all Newman recognizes the salvific character of a life of personal holiness. In this respect the life of Christ exemplifies continuity and not radical interruption with countless human beings outside our usual ken who quietly lead lives of sacramental holiness. Bringing Newman into dialogue with contemporary theologians such as Jacques Dupuis, Roger Haight, Terrence Merrigan, and Thomas Merton, the author proposes four lessons for a theology of religions cast ‘under the light of Wisdom’.     

Psychological Aspects of Retirement: <Emphasis Type="Italic">About Schmidt</Emphasis> (2002), and <Emphasis Type="Italic">Everybody’s Fine</Emphasis> (2009)

With the films About Schmidt and Everybody's Fine as his main point of reference, the author elucidates the complex and often melancholic sojourn that follows ordinary men's retirement from their jobs. As this usually occurs during late middle age, the complicating variable of spousal loss, departure of children from the family home, a failing body, and social marginalization also get added to the picture. The vicissitudes of the resulting intrapsychic and interpersonal upheaval can lead to depressive withdrawal or a renewed effort at finding meaning in life. Ego resilience is tested and sublimation and creativity, if possible, save the day.     

Merton’s “True Self”: A Resource for Survivors of Sexual Abuse by Priests

The toxic impact of clergy sexual abuse in childhood and adolescence can be complex and enduring. For some, a particularly painful consequence is noteworthy change in one’s personal identity or sense of self. Survivors frequently experience unrelenting grief over the loss of the “self” that was experienced as “real” prior to the onset of abuse. Memories of days and times when this self was “alive” are often accompanied by strong feelings of affection and joy. Despair over the loss of this identity contrasts sharply with the indifference or hostility felt for the self with which they have been burdened as a consequence of sexual abuse by clergy in childhood. Many struggle with the unbearable conviction that they are fated to live “in the skin” of an identity that is not an authentic expression of the person they were meant to be. This article suggests that the writings of Thomas Merton (1915–1968) may offer a hopeful resource for survivors of clergy sexual abuse and for those working in support of survivors’ recovery. Merton has been described as “the most influential Catholic author of the twentieth century” ). His writings touch the “deeper woundedness of spirit and psyche” (Kilcourse, Cross Curr, 49:87–96, 1999, p. 90) and his elegant examination of the true self lies “at the center of his teaching on the Christian life” (Conn, Pastor Psychol, 46:323–332, 1998, p. 327). For Merton, the true self is indestructible and, because it is “rooted in God” (Merton, The inner experience: Notes on contemplation, Harper Collins, New York, 2003, p. 2), always open to discovery, growth, and transformation. This framework may be especially useful for individuals whose personal identity, as a consequence of sexual abuse in childhood by clergy, is experienced as forever poisoned and beyond redemption.