Today’s society is a consumer-driven society, constrained by materialism, in which ‘abundance’ is the key word. The importance attached to the material world has reached such a point that it is claimed that what we call the soul is, in fact, the product of electromagnetic impulses and biochemical processes generated by the human body. What made humans unique in comparison with other things in the cosmos – namely, the soul – has been ‘isolated’ in an opaque ‘bunker’, sealed on all sides. In a world where everything is bought and sold, spirituality has become a traded service, yet another ‘product’ purchased to satisfy an apparent mental comfort. Such is the state of the rich man whose fields have yielded a bountiful harvest, who, believing that material prosperity will also satisfy his spiritual needs, paradoxically addresses his own soul: ‘Soul, you have many good things stored up for many years; rest, eat, drink, and be merry’ (Luke 12:19). God’s intervention—the ignored interlocutor who mocks the rich man’s self-congratulatory monologue—contains an exclamation that describes the condition of a man excessively preoccupied with the material things of life: ‘You fool!’
Indifference, disregard or superficial attention to the spiritual dimension of man makes him appear a fool in God’s sight. Why? Because they are endangering their own life—not their physical life, but their spiritual life—by distancing their soul from God and condemning themselves to the hell of their own self-sufficiency. Consequently, the topic proposed for further exploration, although it may at first glance seem somewhat inappropriate, addresses precisely this issue of the soul, the constituent and defining element of the human person. Whilst psychoanalysis identifies and operates within the realm of the human psyche’s mechanisms, through a form of therapy that emphasises the interconnectedness and interdependence between the body and the functioning of the human psyche, Orthodox spirituality, regarding the workings of sin as a pathology with harmful consequences for the spiritual life, focuses its miraculous attention on healing humanity from sin and death and restoring it to a state of communion and love with God.
In Latin, the term salus means salvation, but it also means health. The healing of humankind from the disease of sin consists in the collaboration between humankind, as the patient, and God, the Healer of souls and bodies. True repentance is the prerequisite for any healing. Metanoia, or the change of mind and way of thinking, is not liberation from an ‘1’ existential neurosis, but rather a synergistic act between human will and the grace of the Holy Spirit. Depression, as a pathological manifestation of a soul estranged from God and devoid of love, is the isolation of a bleeding, suffering conscience, ‘for godly sorrow brings repentance leading to salvation, without regret; but the sorrow of the world brings death’ (2 Corinthians 7:10). The state of repentance is not an anxious lamentation over one’s own condition. It is a state of inner joy, a constant prayerful presence, as Father Arsenie Papacioc used to say. Noting the same connection between repentance and joy, Saint Macarius the Egyptian remarks:
‘In the same way, God behaves towards each of us: although He sees how much each of us sins, being good and merciful, He is long-suffering and waits quietly for us to repent. And when someone repents and resolves not to sin again, He receives them with great love and joy. For it is said: ‘I tell you, there is joy among the angels of God over one sinner who repents’ (Luke 15:10)’2
Even before psychoanalysis, Christian spirituality bore witness to the fact that the human soul cannot be reduced merely to that atomistic compartmentalisation, consisting of reason, will and emotion—faculties or powers of the soul through which it manifests itself in relation to other created beings. In his Homilies, Saint Macarius the Egyptian, a 4th-century Desert Father, maps out the soul, thereby demonstrating that he is a ‘specialised explorer’ of the inner self: ‘Just as the members of the body, though many, make up a single human being, so too the members of the soul, though many—mind, conscience, will, thoughts that accuse and thoughts that defend— all, however, are encompassed within a single whole: they are members of the soul, and the inner man is but a single soul’3’.
Speaking of the image of God in man, Christian teaching elaborates on the faculty of self-awareness, through which man takes note of what is happening to himself and around him. Consciousness is specific to a rational hypostasis. In psychoanalysis, the concept of the ‘ego’ is used. Inanimate objects and things in nature do not perceive themselves as existing; therefore, they are self-sufficient. It follows from this that excessive attention paid to matter and the goods of this world produces restlessness and unfulfilment, for only a rational hypostasis, possessing self-consciousness, can validate the existence of another rational hypostasis. An object cannot validate me in my capacity as a personal being. Consequently, it is the relationship with God, as the One Trihypostatic Being, that provides, to the highest degree, the resources necessary for the full realisation of a person, namely, perfection.
A constant feature of Christian asceticism and mysticism is the ascetic’s struggle with himself. Without downplaying the temptations that come from the flesh, the world and the devil, the Christian is aware that, within himself, there exists a level of personality that influences the way they are and act, and which eludes the conscious attention of the mind, being inaccessible to introspection. Saint Macarius says: ‘The soul has many members and great depth’4
‘The precious vessel of the soul is very deep, as it is said somewhere: “He searches the depths and the heart” (Ecclesiastes XLII, 18).’ When man strays from God’s commandment and falls under the judgement of His wrath, sin takes hold of him; that sin which, being subtle and deep, just like great bitterness, has penetrated within him and taken possession of the chambers of his soul, right down to its most hidden corners. We may liken this mingling of soul and sin to a huge tree, with many branches and roots sunk deep into the earth. Just as the tree has its roots deeply embedded in the earth, so too has sin, having penetrated the soul, occupied its most secret chambers, and become a second nature through habit and prejudice. ‘For it develops in everyone from childhood and teaches everyone evil things’5
The ‘depth’ referred to in the Macarian corpus is none other than the lowest level of the human psyche, which psychoanalysts call the unconscious, the self, or the id. 6 Because it is characterised by structural disorder, being the seat of biological drives that generate a powerful desire for self-assertion, the unconscious represents the self which the Saviour Jesus Christ urges us to renounce: ‘If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me’ (Matthew 16:24). In other words, the Lord Christ does not propose a renunciation of individuality, self-denial or depersonalisation, but urges a detachment from that which causes us to behave irrationally and without meaning. Self-denial means the suppression of animality.
The unconscious is not a primary component of the human psyche. It arose with the Fall into sin; therefore, the unconscious is a product of evil, an irrational corruption of the soul, a pathogen alien to man’s original state: ‘As a result of the first man’s disobedience, something alien to our nature entered into us—the wickedness of the passions, which, through much practice and habit, has become a second nature’7 The workings of the unconscious are absurd, morbid, and rife with obscene desires and immoral impulses; hence, one can observe a certain dark connection with the body, which it commands and subjugates. We can deduce that the unconscious became active following the Fall from the irrational behaviour of the first parents, who, realising they were naked, made coverings for themselves from fig leaves, in an attempt to conceal the modesty resulting from the unnatural workings of the soul’s desiring dimension. A second ‘failed act’ committed by Adam and Eve was their attempt to hide amongst the trees of Paradise, a genuine attempt to repress their guilt. The garments of skin, interpreted from a psychoanalytical perspective, are nothing other than the medium of interaction between what Sigmund Freud called the ‘pleasure principle’ and the ‘reality principle’, two antagonistic principles that generate conflict. This conflict rages constantly within the human soul and forms the field of inquiry for both abyssal psychology and Christian spirituality. Self-knowledge and the conscious acceptance of death would represent the points of intersection between these two practices 8. Saint Macarius speaks of the battle waged in the depths of the human being, saying: ‘The heart has a boundless depth, within which there are banquet halls and bedrooms, doors, porches, many places of service and exits. There lies the laboratory of righteousness and unrighteousness; there lies death and life; there lies good and evil trade’9
Because the unconscious is a malignant appendage that parasitises the soul, diverting it from its true purpose, a psychological understanding of how evil operates in the world must also be taken into account. The psychoanalytic interpretation of theodicy opens up new horizons with regard to liberation, healing and salvation.
Lucifer’s fall is nothing other than the failed establishment of the Oedipus Complex. The adversity and rebellion of the angel of light against God the Father were exacerbated by a narcissistic view of his own existence:
‘How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn! How you have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations! You who said in your heart: “I will ascend into heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of the Almighty! On the holy mountain I will set up my dwelling, in the farthest reaches of the north. I will ascend above the clouds and be like the Most High’. And now, you are cast down to hell, to the lowest depths of the abyss!’ (Isaiah XIV, 12–15).
The moment Lucifer turned away from what God, as a father figure, represented—that is, the superego, the Supreme Consciousness of existence in and of itself—he turned his attention inwards towards himself: the stage of Lacan’s mirror 10. This explains, from the perspective of abyssal analysis, the sin of pride, and why this, together with self-love, is regarded in Christian doctrine as the source of evil. Gazing upon himself, Lucifer was struck by his own beauty and light—a beauty and light that were not of his own making, but were received from God, the Ever-Existing Light. This is where the motif of the split personality—11—comes into play, a motif we also encounter in the works of Dostoevsky and Bulgakov with regard to the devil. Wishing to become the source of this marvellous radiance himself, the angel, as a son of God by creation, hatches a rebellion, a plot to kill his father – the Oedipus Complex. In his Homilies, Saint Macarius the Egyptian emphasises that God is not the author of evil and that man was not created with an inherent capacity for wickedness:
‘Evil has no substance in God, for God is impassive and divine. In us, however, it is at work in every faculty and sensation, instilling all manner of impure desires. Yet it has not mingled with us, as wine mingles with water – as some say; but rather as wheat stands on its own in a field alongside the tares, which stand on their own, and as the thief and the master of the house dwell in the same house’12”.
Extending this same paradigm to the human condition, we may say that anti-religious impulses, atheism and unbelief are distorted emotions springing from unconscious hostility and disobedience towards the Father. Once sin had entered human nature and creation, it was passed on as a phylogenetic inheritance: ‘Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, so death spread to all men, because all have sinned in him’ (Romans 5:12). The darkening of the mind brought about by original sin involves the expansion of the unconscious’s sphere of influence into the sphere of human activity. This is what the Lord Christ refers to in the Sermon on the Mount when He says: ‘If, then, the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!’ (Matthew 6:23). Consequently, from birth, human beings carry within them these mnemonic traces—a memory of sin inscribed in human nature. Carl Gustav Jung speaks of a collective unconscious or Archetypes, that is, ancestral behavioural patterns that shape the individual psyche 13. In the spirituality of the desert, Adam’s sin represented the premise for the corruption of every soul by the evil one: ‘For, ever since Adam transgressed the commandment, the thoughts of the soul have strayed far from the love of God, turning towards this world and mingling with material and earthly thoughts. By transgressing the commandment, Adam received within himself the leaven of evil passions and, by participation, those born of him – the whole race of Adam – became partakers of that leaven’14
Christian baptism, through which original sin is washed away, does not remove those ‘memory traces’ defined by psychoanalysis. In the logic of Saint Macarius’s thought, everything converges upon the inner self of man, so that spiritual progress too begins with the grace of Baptism, with the external rite, and seeks the perfection of the inner life. Without dwelling on liturgical aspects, the Egyptian homilist focuses, above all, on the spiritual significance of Baptism and its implications for the sanctification of the human person. After Baptism, Macarius maintains, man becomes the protagonist of the coexistence of grace and sin within the soul, a teaching expressed primarily – and here we encounter one of the distinctive features of his theology – that after Baptism grace and sin coexist within man, that sin is not automatically eliminated, but that a persistent struggle is necessary in this regard. Through his teaching, Saint Macarius sets out to counter a simplistic view prevalent amongst Christians, according to which the effects of Baptism would entail a definitive banishment of evil from man, and complete immunity to demonic attacks. In their view, Baptism conferred not only the forgiveness of sins but also the removal of evil inclinations from the soul. However, Saint Macarius speaks of Baptism as a beginning, as the starting point of an ongoing process.
It sometimes happens that the unconscious bursts into the conscious in the form of dreams, the ‘royal road’ to the unconscious, as Freud mentions. Since a dream represents the disguised fulfilment of a repressed or suppressed desire, spiritual fathers have always urged Christians to guard against attempting to interpret dreams. Why? Because, more often than not, the devil exploits this weakness and seeks to influence the human mind in order to divert it from the state of wakefulness (νῆψις). On the other hand, interpreting a dream means, from a cognitive point of view, attributing a certain rationality to a Dadaist jumble of images and feelings that ‘escape’ from the irrational chaos of the unconscious. The analysis of a dream involves dwelling on the desire that generated it; it is, therefore, a negative opportunity to interact with sin. This is dangerous and harmful to the person seeking perfection, as Saint Macarius notes:
‘So, if a man of inner life and spiritual stature has fallen, how can anyone say: “I fast, I offer shelter, I share my possessions with the poor; I am already a saint.” For abstaining from evil does not amount to perfection; perfection lies in penetrating your darkened mind and slaying the serpent thathas killed you, which lurks in the deepest part of your mind and in the depths of your thoughts, in the so-called storehouses and resting places of the soul. Indeed, the heart is an abyss, but you must slay this serpent and cast out all impurity from within yourself’15
Freud defines the human condition as the consequence of the repression of an initial act of violence or a conscious confrontation with a crisis situation. Original sin led to the emergence of a trauma which humanity carries in the collective unconscious as an ancestral legacy of guilt 16. The proclamation of a ‘God Who Has Died’ (Nietzsche) betrays man’s attempt to take the place of the Heavenly Father. Man’s rebellion against the Creator is rooted in aggression, the desire for domination and the instinct for self-preservation, which pulsate from within the self and degenerate into the act of eliminating one’s fellow man—a phenomenon known in psychoanalysis as the ‘Cain complex’17— and in spirituality as a disturbance and inner turmoil:
‘For when Adam transgressed God’s commandment, his entire lineage became sinful and harbours within (in its soul) the image (of Cain), who is troubled, wavering with fear and dread and all manner of lusts and temptations, with which the ruler of this world stirs up every soul that has not been born of God. Just as wheat is ceaselessly tossed about in the winnowing basket, so too are people’s thoughts tossed about in various ways, by the fleeting deceptions of the flesh, by fear and by turmoil’18
If sin had brought human nature to the stage of unconscious rebellion against the father figure, there was a need for Someone who would not fall under the fatal influence of the Oedipus complex. Thus, the Incarnation of the Son of God marks the moment of the Saviour Christ’s appearance in the world – the Anti-Oedipus 19. The assumption of human nature by the divine Person of the Word of God entailed the virtual recapitulation of all humanity in Christ, Who ‘humbled Himself, becoming obedient even unto death, even death on a cross’ (Philippians 2:8). Thus, the Son’s total obedience to the Father is extended to those who embrace a way of life based on the imitation of Christ. The imitation of Christ by Christians, culminating in the imprinting of the Eucharistic Christ upon them, entails the conformation of the ‘ego’ to the ‘super-ego’, the imitation of the Father, the Norm and Standard of perfect being. ‘And the glory which Thou hast given Me, I have given unto them, that they may be one, even as We are one: I in them and You in Me, so that they may be made perfect in oneness, and that the world may know that You have sent Me and that You have loved them, just as You have loved Me’ (John 17:22–23). Psychoanalysts put forward the idea that narcissism is hidden within every form of love. To love something or someone is merely a reflection of a need of the ego. The only authentic love is manifested in Sacrifice. Christ’s Sacrifice is the one and only proof of selfless Love, devoid of any trace of narcissism—that sacrificial agape love.
The moral authority of the conscience can be likened to the psychological function of the censor, which filters thoughts and ensures that the ego’s behavioural pattern conforms to the terms and conditions imposed by the superego—the idealised father, the lawgiver. In Christianity, the superego is identified with the divine-human Person of Christ the Saviour, Who fulfilled the whole Law and the Prophets, reaching ‘the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ’ (Ephesians 4:11). ‘Let us also suppose a ship with a well-organised crew: there the captain leads and directs everyone, rebuking some and instructing others. So too is the heart, which has the mind as its captain, the conscience that scrutinises the thoughts that accuse or defend themselves’20). When a person’s thoughts or actions fail to meet the moral, social and cultural requirements of the context to which they belong, they may observe that, within themselves, there is an authority that opposes or disapproves of their actions. Conscience is a universal, yet malleable, phenomenon. It makes value judgements on the way in which the self manages its own existence and warns, rebukes or sanctions those deviations which are detrimental to the human condition. As the term suggests, conscience is the capacity to know together with someone. For Christians, this Someone is God, Who, through the image imprinted in humankind, remains a witness to human thoughts and deeds: ‘All who have received the seed of divinity carry it invisibly and, because of the sin that dwells within them, hide it in dark and terrifying places’21
It should be noted that there is a significant difference between consciousness and conscience. Consciousness refers to a subject’s natural capacity to perceive themselves and the manner in which they interact with external elements. Consciousness is capable of circumscribing and delimiting the ‘space’ occupied by a subject, a self. A person is conscious when the mind can distinguish and differentiate between different moments, positions and periods of existence 22. On the other hand, it is consciousness that interprets the mind’s cognitive processes and attributes specific meanings to them. Consciousness involves relating every mental movement to a higher, authoritative criterion. In this way, consciousness accesses memory, where it encounters the reference points shaped within the family environment, cultural norms, social obligations and traditions, ethnic imperatives and, last but not least, religious prescriptions: the commandments of God.
Like an iceberg, the lower part of memory lies in the unconscious. It is there that thoughts which, at some point, failed to meet the standards demanded by the external environment have been repressed and have crystallised into a content that splits the conscious self. For this reason, Jung refers to the self and the shadow, as the latter accompanies the ego and influences it. St Macarius the Egyptian also identifies this shadow—which has no ontological or hypostatic substance—that clings to the human soul when he writes: ‘Indeed, a power of darkness, hidden and subtle, is revealed, dwelling within your heart’23 A more nuanced clarification of the self by Eastern Christian spirituality would be an asset in dialogue with the other sciences of the soul 24.
Another aspect addressed by Saint Macarius the Egyptian in his Homilies is the relationship between the soul and the body. The spiritually enlightened monk of the Sketis desert, like other Holy Fathers, partly adopts the Aristotelian theory of the soul as entelechy, or as the form of the organic body, through which the body is directed towards its goal. In other words, the body possesses life in potential, in the sense that it develops or actualises itself; and since the soul is linked to the growing organic life, it can be said that the soul, too, is initially largely a potential that develops: ‘Likewise, the inner man is like a figurine, having a face and a form. The inner man is a likeness of the outer man’25
The body is related to the soul by hypostasis, and this connection is not severed by bodily death, as evidenced by the resurrection of every soul into its corresponding body. In Macarian thought, the body contains the soul and the soul contains the body. The two realities encompass and interpenetrate one another in an anthropological synergy which becomes the indelible foundation of ascetic and mystical practice. The soul manifests itself through the body, whilst the body’s actions are imprinted upon the soul. For this reason, the ritual manifestation of the body influences the way one thinks, decides and acts: ‘Thus it is that the soul, being subtle, permeates the eye with which it sees, the ear with which it hears, the tongue with which it speaks, the hand and, in a word, the whole body. And as the soul encompasses all the limbs of the body, it mingles with them and carries out through them all the deeds of life’26”.
Another topic which the author of the 50 Spiritual Homilies addresses, in a manner worthy of a contemporary researcher in the field of abyssal psychology, is the difference between freedom and free will. In a passage from his work, Saint Macarius makes the following statement:
‘For in the beginning man was master of all things from the heavens down to the depths of the earth; he was able to discern between his impulses; he was alien to demons, free from sin and vice; he was the image and likeness of God. However, by transgressing the commandment, he was lost and wounded. Satan darkened his mind, so that, in part, he is as such, and in part he discerns, has a will and lives’27
In Saint Macarius’s view, although fallen man enjoys the capacity for free will, this does not confer total freedom upon him. Man’s free choices are, however, conditioned by a series of factors of an unconscious nature. The same view was to be put forward, a millennium and a half later, by the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. The ‘predestination’ that Freud understood, through his study of human character, did not have a transcendental dimension, but an anthropological one. Deep within human nature, tainted by the corrupting influence of sin, there are impulses ‘planted’ that influence every decision we take or choice we make. Freudian psychological determinism does not mean that every choice is the work of the occult forces of the unconscious. The unconscious is that level of the personality which, on a subliminal level, suggests to free will the choice most likely to be approved by the needs of human nature 28.
‘The war is waged first within, in the heart; (there) the struggle and the war take place; (there) lies the balance that tilts either towards the love of God, (or towards) the love of the world. It is from there that each person discerns, and it is from there that the decision to engage in conflict with one’s brother arises, as one says to oneself: ‘Shall I speak? Shall I say something? Shall I not speak?’ (There, within, man) remembers God, but, held back by his own pride, does not renounce himself’29
This restraint of pride denotes the manipulative action of the proud and irrational unconscious, which compels man to make a certain decision, and no other. True freedom, as professed and preached by Orthodox Christian morality, consists not merely in the ability to choose between good and evil, but in the possibility of completely ruling out the option of evil. Christian freedom is the liberation of the soul from sin and death, accompanied by the erasure of every residual trace of the workings of evil from human nature. This is achieved through the deification of the person and entry into a communion of love with the Most Holy Trinity.
It is also in the writings of Saint Macarius the Egyptian that we encounter the term ‘temptation’ (προσβολής), a term he established in Philocalic literature, which is concerned with describing in detail the mechanism of temptation. Indeed, temptations are, at the same time, the driving force behind vigilance (νῆψις) and a sign of the authenticity of the spiritual life. The absence of temptations induces a false sense of impassivity. Yet ἀπάθεια – dispassion – means immunity to them, not their non-existence.
Having said that, I have sought to shed light on an aspect that is as controversial as it is thought-provoking, namely, to what extent can we speak of an intersection between psychoanalysis and Orthodox Christian spirituality 30 and to what extent this dialogue may be relevant to the life of the soul.
- 1
Charles D. Hackett, ‘Psychoanalysis and Theology: Two Dialectics’, in Journal of Religion and Health, XXV (1986), 1, pp. 29–45.
- 2
Saint Macarius the Egyptian, The 50 Spiritual Homilies, IV, 21, in PSB, vol. 34, Published by the Biblical and Missionary Institute of the Romanian Orthodox Church, Bucharest, 1992, p. 107.
- 3
Saint Macarius the Egyptian, The 50 Spiritual Homilies, VII, 8,... p. 126.
- 4
Saint Macarius the Egyptian, The 50 Spiritual Homilies, L, 4,... p. 282.
- 5
Saint Macarius the Egyptian, The 50 Spiritual Homilies, XLII, 1,... pp. 254–255.
- 6
See: Jean-Claude Filloux, The Unconscious, trans. Carmen Attal, Aropa, Bucharest, 2001.
- 7
Saint Macarius the Egyptian, The 50 Spiritual Homilies, IV, 8,... p. 101.
- 8
Patrick Lee Miller, ‘Psychoanalysis as Spirituality’, in Symplokē, XVIII (2010), 1–2, pp. 31–46.
- 9
Saint Macarius the Egyptian, The 50 Spiritual Homilies, XV, 32,... p. 164.
- 10
Charles D. Hackett, ‘Psychoanalysis and Theology: Jacques Lacan and Paul’, in Journal of Religion and Health, XXI (1982), 3, pp. 184–192.
- 11
See: Alfred Binet, The Split Personality and the Unconscious, trans. Michaela Brândușa Malcinschi, Iri, Bucharest, 1998.
- 12
Saint Macarius the Egyptian, The 50 Spiritual Homilies, XVI, 1,... p. 172.
- 13
Carl Gustav Jung, The Power of the Soul: An Anthology. Part One: Analytical Psychology: Foundations, trans. Suzana Holan, Anima, Bucharest, 1994, pp. 33–37.
- 14
Saint Macarius the Egyptian, The 50 Spiritual Homilies, XXIV, 2,... p. 198.
- 15
Saint Macarius the Egyptian, The 50 Spiritual Homilies, XVII, 15,... pp. 182–183.
- 16
Michael Mack, ‘The Savage Science: Sigmund Freud, Psychoanalysis and the History of Religion’, in Journal of the History of Religion, vol. 30, no. 3, (2006), pp. 331–353.
- 17
Stephen P. Bank, Michael D. Kahn, The Psychology of Sibling Relationships, trans. Oana Maria Nica, Trei Publishers, Bucharest, 2016, p. 199.
- 18
Saint Macarius the Egyptian, The 50 Spiritual Homilies, V, 2, … p. 110.
- 19
Paul C. Vitz, John Gartner, ‘Christianity and Psychoanalysis, Part 1: Jesus as Anti-Oedipus’, in Journal of Psychology and Theology, XII, (1984), 1, pp. 4–14.
- 20
Saint Macarius the Egyptian, The 50 Spiritual Homilies, XV, 33, ... p. 164.
- 21
Saint Macarius the Egyptian, The 50 Spiritual Homilies, XLIII, 5,... p. 259.
- 22
Thomas Natsoulas, ‘Concepts of Consciousness’, in The Journal of Mind and Behaviour, IV (1983), 1, pp. 13–59.
- 23
Saint Macarius the Egyptian, The 50 Spiritual Homilies, XXXII, 10,... p. 239.
- 24
John McDargh, ‘The Life of the Self in Christian Spirituality and Contemporary Psychoanalysis’, in Horizons, XI (1984), 2, pp. 344–360.
- 25
Saint Macarius the Egyptian, The 50 Spiritual Homilies, XVI, 7,... p. 175.
- 26
Saint Macarius the Egyptian, The 50 Spiritual Homilies, IV, 9,... p. 102.
- 27
Saint Macarius the Egyptian, The 50 Spiritual Homilies, XXVI, 1,... p. 204.
- 28
Sigmund Freud, An Introduction to Psychoanalysis. Lectures on Psychoanalysis. The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, trans. Leonard Gavriliu, Didactică și Pedagogică, Bucharest, 1990, pp. 557–560.
- 29
Saint Macarius the Egyptian, The 50 Spiritual Homilies, V, 6,... pp. 113–114.
- 30
Edwin R. Wallace, ‘Reflection on the Relationship Between Psychoanalysis and Christianity’, in: Pastoral Psychology, XXXI (1983), 4, pp. 215–243.