Download PDF | Insanity And Sanctity In Byzantium The Ambiguity Of Religious Experience Harvard University Press (2016)
267 Pages
Insanity and Religion
n every period in history the definition of insanity is pertinent, and its meaning is different. We owe this perception to a large movement in the scholarship of the 1960s and 1970s that changed our concept of what constitutes sanity and insanity. This scholarship examined the ways in which such concepts were formed as part of the medical, mental, social, cultural, but above all political settings. A number of important studies on psychology and psychiatry, whether in the fields of social sciences, the humanities, or medicine (by Michel Foucault, Roy Porter, William Bynum, Gladys Swain, Marcel Gauchet, Franco Basaglia, among others), has radically changed the way we look at insanity.
These studies brought insanity out of the individual dimension, and made it a social, cultural, and political phenomenon.! In a way, the wave of study of psychiatry in the 1960s and 1970s was a response to the development of psychoanalysis in the first half of the twentieth century, which concentrated on the psychological dimension in the individual. These new directions of thought shifted the understanding of what constitutes insanity from the individual to the social and political dimensions. Nevertheless, they still placed the individual in the center, affected by the social settings, mental constructs, and politics. This perspective was conditioned by the link between psychology and medicine, according to which the insane person was perceived as sick.
The present study chooses a different line of investigation. In a way, it goes in the opposite direction by focusing on societies that sanctified what today we consider insanity. These societies looked for spiritual values in abnormal, or insane, behavior, and legitimized it by attributing a unique spiritual character to figures who portrayed it. In this they were changing the social and cultural norms related to abnormality and normality. A parallel process can also be detected in contemporary societies. Only few decades ago, people in Western societies who turned to healers, clairvoyants, and mediums were themselves considered to be not in their right mind.
Today, not only is such behavior legitimized, it is even becoming a norm. These so-called New Age phenomena express the invasion of the religious sphere into modern secular societies. We do not call them “religious,” but “spiritual” in order to reject the religious establishment and its historical framework. However, such expressions of spirituality have long been the realm of the religious sphere. The question is why secular societies today have become more and more inclined to adopt and legitimize these expressions of spirituality, and justify their functionality.
As for the borderline between sanity and insanity, in today’s world this has become a large field of mental disorders that cannot be arranged on a sliding scale. Moreover, these disorders are intricately woven into the social and cultural fabric of Western modern life. This raises two questions: Where do we draw the line between normal and abnormal behavior? And what is the place of individual abnormal behavior in the social fabric especially in situations when the individual’s behavior disturbs the social?
The present book does not deal with modern societies, but proposes analyzing the same question in a different period of great changes: the Christianization of the Roman world, a process of transformation which marked the beginning of a new age, the monotheistic age. As this book will show, the development of new religious settings necessitated the use and abuse of what constitutes abnormality in order to produce a shift.
This shift was religious, cultural, political, social, and mental. The borderline between normality and abnormality, one of the most important borderlines of the social setting, proved in the period under examination to be extremely elastic. In the center of our examination lies the question of the relationship between the elasticity of these definitions and the historical changes that were produced in the Roman world between the second and the seventh centuries, changes that transformed it into a new civilization and created the world of Byzantium.
In other words, the main question that this study addresses, concerns the way in which historical processes develop and can be realized as a product of changes of a psychological nature. An analysis of the development of early Christian societies will clearly demonstrate this. The book thus focuses on different types of social abnormality that were sanctified in the new Christian framework and reveals their social functionality, while comparing them to their contemporary Jewish equivalents.
The Abnormal as a Social Engine
The phenomenon of sanctification, attributing holiness and sanctity to human beings, became prevalent in the period under examination, the period of Byzantine antiquity. Many of such figures portrayed an abnormal behavior to their societies. Attributing holiness and sanctity to figures of abnormal behavior should be seen also as means to normalize abnormal forms of behavior. We can observe this in figures of martyrs, ascetics, and liminal figures whose abnormality reflects the breaking of accepted norms in order to define new ones. This of course creates a shift in the borderline between what is considered to be an accepted and unaccepted, normal and abnormal, sane and insane behavior.
But the sanctification of abnormal behavior also presents a problem of uncertainty. The historian who analyzes such phenomena can never be sure whether holy persons whose behavior was abnormal, consciously and intentionally defined new norms to their society, or whether they were chosen as symbols of transformations regardless of their rea/ mental state. This problem of uncertainty reveals the ambiguity that such figures portray. Moreover, the ambiguity about the interpretation of their state applied also to their own society. In order to challenge the norms of their society, they needed to portray ambiguity to their surroundings. Their behavior was seen as both insane, but at the same time as intentional and courageous. This ambiguity, as this book will show, proves to be central to religious experience and serves, moreover, as a vehicle for change.
The present book examines the role that abnormal social behavior plays in the definition of holiness, and reveals the circumstances and reasons for sanctifying such patterns of behavior. We will see that their ambiguous character makes such figures particularly useful to society by challenging both the perception and definition of the borderline between sanity and insanity.
First of all, the ambiguous holiness of such ecstatic figures does not permit any definitive demarcation of this border. In this way it renders this borderline unclear, and in fact transforms it to a less rigid borderline between normality and abnormality. Second, this shift in the definition of what is considered normal and abnormal behavior is employed by society in order to implement a change of mentality and a change of its settings. In fact, these changes result in changing the perception of reality and reality itself. The sanctification of abnormality proves here to be socially functional in shifting the borderline between what is normal and abnormal behavior.
This regards not any type of abnormality, but abnormality that can be used in order to challenge the perception of reality. This is the reason why the present book is concerned with what we define today as insanity, that is, mental abnormalities. As we shall see, forms of sanctity that are specifically designed in order to challenge the perception of reality and the borderline between sanity and insanity appear to be essential to the development of a religious society and are used to generate social movements.
In what follows we will use intentionally the terms “insanity” and “abnormality” without qualifiers in order to be able to follow the elasticity of the definitions of these terms in view of the social, cultural, and mental conditions and needs. As Foucault has shown, the notion of the borderline between sanity and insanity as a rigid concept may not apply to every society. In fact, the present examination of the borderline between normal and abnormal social behavior will reveal its elasticity, which rigid definitions of insanity and sanity preclude. In other words, the religious realm employs the borderline between normal and abnormal behaviors because it can render it ambiguous much more easily than the borderline between sanity and insanity.
In using the terms “insanity” and “sanity” we follow the modern definitions of what constitutes abnormal mental condition. But defining insanity as a mental condition of the individual, constructs it at the same time as a social phenomenon in view of the boundary it sets between what is considered accepted (i.e., “normal”/“sane”) behavior and unaccepted (i.e., “abnormal”/“insane”) behavior. In contrast to unaccepted intentional behavior, insanity and mental abnormality refer to unintentional behavior and are understood as disease, sickness, or disorder.
The use of the term “mental disorder” itself reveals the ways in which such an individual behavior is understood today. Like the term “insanity,” it conceptualizes certain behaviors as disruptions of the sane mental condition which is perceived as “order,” and in the same time as disruptions of the “normal” or “sane” social order. We will therefore leave aside the binary definitions of sanity-insanity and look at insanity as deviancy in situations when the individual’s behavior disturbs the social.?
This makes the borderline between sanity and insanity an undefined space, and creates an ambiguity about the definition of insanity. To society, such behaviors are abnormal “human noise.” Nevertheless, referring to the deviant characteristic of insanity will enable us to shift our attention from the mental and medical states of the abnormal individual, and to examine the way in which society perceives and addresses it.
Although to society such behaviors are deviant, that is, abnormal “human noise,” they can also become functional and serve as means to redefine social and cultural norms. As we shall see, in the religious societies under examination such “noises” or deviances that reflect an abnormal mental behavior, played an important role as means of change.
This book thus analyzes the significance of insanity to the social fabric by focusing on the realm that has long used it: religion. By sanctifying forms of abnormality religion does not allow a static definition of insanity and sanity. In this, the importance of such an analysis exceeds the realm of the historical research of one particular culture in time. It provides a unique case study for examining the ways in which the phenomenon of insanity and sanity affects and determines social settings.
Between History and Psychology: Problems of Methodology
In order to investigate such questions the present study develops a unique methodology. Rather than choose between religious studies, history, and psychology, the methodology taken in this book combines all three fields. This approach aims to draw a parallel line between the dynamics of the psychological process from the one hand, and the evolution of a religious society on the other hand.
It examines the conditions for abnormality to become socially functional, and reveals the social meaning of insanity that lies at the basis of religion. It aspires to find a new way to look at insanity, and in the process proposes a new method to use and analyze historical evidence. As we shall see, this method of analysis moves between the fields of history, religious studies, and psychology.
We ask questions that relate to all three fields, but instead of combining material and methodologies from the three disciplines, the method taken in the present study aims to work in between them in order to analyze the historical evidence from both a historical and a psychological perspective. This methodology aspires to turn the relation between history and psychology (we use here “psychology” in grouping psychoanalysis, analytical psychology, and group psychology, though this study concerns mainly the first) into a two-way-street relationship, and to look into the historical evidence in order to challenge the way we conceptualize insanity today.
The disadvantages of this method are obvious: to the historian the religious studies and psychoanalytical discussions might seem superfluous. On the other hand, a scholar of religious studies might say that this book ignores much of the classic discussions of the field including the phenomenology of religion, and will find the historical analyses too specific to be interesting or fructuous.
To the psychoanalyst, in contrast, both history and religious studies may seem irrelevant to the psychological questions that the book aims to address. Since the methodology taken here is unique in aiming to construct a shared analysis to the three disciplines involved, instead of importing accepted theories from one to the benefit of the other, this study may seem a priori as falling between the stools. Nevertheless, as we shall see, this risk will prove itself advantageous in presenting a way to analyze historical sources, which is set on the common ground of discussion between the three fields.
The book is divided into two parts that propose complementary approaches to address the question of insanity in religious experience. Part I, “Santified Insanity: Between History and Psychology,” analyzes the phenomenon of sanctified insanity through a particular phenomenon: the Byzantine holy fool. It proposes a new historical-psychoanalytical perspective and employs it in a two-way-street analysis. Chapter 1, “The Paradox That Inhabits Ambiguity,” includes a general introduction to the paradox that sanctified insanity presents to the modern mind.
The chapter takes as a case study the phenomenon of the Byzantine holy fool and reveals the limits of scholarship in analyzing the borderline between sanity and insanity that such a phenomenon defines. Chapter 2, “Meanings of Insanity,” investigates the social role of ambiguity in religious experience. This chapter focuses on the way the figure of the holy fool functions within the religious community as both a literary and social figure in order to produce a change in the perception of reality. The chapter concludes with the role of ambiguity of the mental state as a fundamental means for challenging the social, cultural, and psychological structure.
Part H, “Abnormality and Social Change: Early Christianity versus Rabbinic Judaism,” presents a comparative analysis of early Christianity and rabbinic Judaism, and reveals the opposite ways in which these religious societies addressed the sanctification of abnormality. Chapter 3, “Abnormality and Social Change: Insanity and Martyrdom,” confronts the historical analysis of insanity with the construction of the martyr as a figure of abnormal behavior in order to implement broader changes of mentality, society, and politics.
The way in which normal and the abnormal social behaviors are defined appears here to be a formative factor of social changes, and not only their product. Chapter 4, “Socializing Nature: The Ascetic Totem,” compares the phenomenon of asceticism in early Christian and rabbinic Jewish communities. A priori, asceticism portrays a withdrawal from society into nature, while the voluntary torments inflicted on one’s body can be considered pathological. However, an anthropological reading of such a type of abnormal behavior reveals that in the religious setting exemplifying the “pathology” of asceticism serves a social function. It links the relationship of humans and nature with the relationship of humans and culture.
Finally, the Epilogue, “Psychology, Religion and Social Change,” leaves the lines of investigation taken in the book in order to answer the main question raised throughout the book: What is mental abnormality? Taking as its base the concept of ambiguity between insanity and sanity in religious language, it aims to reconnect the study of religious societies to our understanding of psychological processes as social phenomena.
We therefore begin with the ways in which scholarship addresses the phenomenon of the sanctification of insanity, and their limits. The ambiguity embedded in this phenomenon appears to pose not only a paradox to the modern mind but also a serious problem for the scholar.
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