{"id":19433,"date":"2022-06-08T09:58:58","date_gmt":"2022-06-08T08:58:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kennethsorensen.dk\/?p=19433"},"modified":"2026-08-12T13:55:27","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T12:55:27","slug":"mysticism-and-medicine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kennethsorensen.dk\/en\/mysticism-and-medicine\/","title":{"rendered":"Mysticism And Medicine"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Madness Would Sometimes Be Infinitely Superior to the Sanity of Normal People: Mystical Phenomena as Spiritual Awakening, Not Nervous Disorder<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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By Roberto Assagioli<\/strong>
Assagioli Archive – Florence, Docs. #27493, #27494, #27495
Original title: Mistica e Medicina<\/em>
Address at the Fourth Mystical Conference, Florence, January 1925
Published in Ultra<\/em>, No. 1, March 1925
Translated and Edited with Notes by Jan Kuniholm<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Editorial Note<\/strong>
The abstract and contextual subtitle in this online edition have been added by the editor, Kenneth S\u00f8rensen, to support readability, navigation, and archival consistency. The original wording has not been altered. The translator’s notes by Jan Kuniholm, marked [Tr.], provide historical context, source identification, and linguistic clarifications that supplement the original text. This article is a historical document. Some of the language and framing reflect the period in which it was written and may not align with contemporary understanding. The term “hysteria” applied to female mystics reflects early 20th-century psychiatric language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Abstract<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In this lecture, Roberto Assagioli challenges the positivist claim that mystical phenomena are merely pathological manifestations. He argues that nervous disorders in mystics such as St. Teresa and St. Francis are organic repercussions of intense spiritual life, not its cause, citing Max Nordau’s analogy that calling genius a neurosis is as absurd as calling athleticism a heart disease. He traces the stages of mystical development, from premystical tension through soul awakening to the dark night of the soul, before advocating a new mysticism that honours the body as the spirit’s temple and reclaims healing as a central mystical function.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In the last century, and even in this one, numerous positivist scientists (I will name only Murisier, <\/span><\/span>[1]<\/span><\/span><\/a> Janet, <\/span><\/span>[2]<\/span><\/span><\/a> Binet-Sangl\u00e9, <\/span><\/span>[3]<\/span><\/span><\/a> Portigliotti, <\/span><\/span>[4]<\/span><\/span><\/a> and recently some representatives of the Psychoanalytic school) have claimed to \u201cexplain\u201d mystical phenomena by considering them as pathological manifestations. From the fact that many mystics undeniably had nervous disorders, they inferred that all mystical activity was the result of illness.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I certainly need not pause to refute this gross conception, which reveals a complete misunderstanding of what mystical experience is. But since in the public, and especially among physicians and psychoanalysts, that error is still very widespread, I do not consider it unnecessary to reaffirm as a physician that the observation of symptoms of illness in a human being does not in the least entitle one to devalue his spiritual experiences.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I had occasion to write several years ago, “the intellectual and moral value of a personality is entirely independent of the morbid symptoms which may afflict it and which it may have in common with other lesser and truly degenerate personalities. If it is true that St. Teresa, St. Catherine of Genoa and many other noble religious women were affected by “hysteria,” this should not in the least diminish our admiration for their spiritual gifts; instead, we must modify our opinion of the character of \u201chysterical women.\u201d If St. Francis had \u2014 as has been claimed \u2014 \u201cdegenerative somatic stigmata,\u201d this certainly does not diminish our veneration for the Poor Man of Assisi, but instead shows that those stigmata do not always have the \u201cdegenerative\u201d meaning attributed to them and may cause us to modify our concept of \u201cdegeneration.\u201d Finally, if it were true \u2014 as a certain French doctor <\/span><\/span>[5]<\/span><\/span><\/a> has claimed to prove \u2014 that Jesus, that sublime ideal of humanity, was a madman, that would only mean that madness would sometimes be infinitely superior to the sanity of normal people, including psychiatrists.” <\/span><\/span>[6]<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

After all, even one of the most in-vogue positivists of the last century, Max Nordau, <\/span><\/span>[7]<\/span><\/span><\/a> understood what a gross error is committed in considering the higher manifestations of the spirit as morbid phenomena. Nordau, repudiating the theory of his master Lombroso, <\/span><\/span>[8]<\/span><\/span><\/a> said in a felicitous phrase that it is just as unjustified to claim that “genius is a neurosis” as it would be to claim that “athleticism is a heart disease” on the grounds that many gymnasts suffer from heart ailments. <\/span><\/span>[9]<\/span><\/span><\/a> This comparison shows us the true relationships between illness and mysticism. The nervous and psychic ailments of mystics, when they are not a mere accidental co-occurrence, are at most an effect, an organic repercussion of their intense spiritual life \u2014 just as the heart ailments of athletes are merely an effect of their intense muscular exertions.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n