¹ Glucklich, Ariel, “Sacred Pain and the Phenomenal Self,” HTR 91 (1998) 389–412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

² Vauchez, Andre, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, trans. Birrell, Jean (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977) 197, 374, 365.Google Scholar

³ Bynum, Caroline Walker, Holy Feast and Holy Fail (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1987) 391 n.77Google Scholar

⁴ Tobin, Frank, ed., Henry Suso: The Examplar, with Two German Sermons (trans, idem; New York: Paulist Press, 1989).Google Scholar

⁵ Egan, Jennifer, “The Thin Red Line,” The New York Times Magazine, 07 27, 1997, 21–25.Google Scholar

⁶ Favazza, Armando R., Bodies Under Siege: Self-Mutilation and Body Modification in Culture and Psychology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).Google Scholar

⁷ Ibid., xvii-xix.

⁸ Russ, M. J., “Self-Injurious Behavior in Patients with Borderline Personality Disorder: Biological Perspectives,” Journal of Personality Disorders 6 (1992) 64–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁹ There are dozens of theories for thousands of clinical cases in this one category alone, which breaks down into numerous types. See, for instance, Freud, Anna, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense (New York: International Universities Press, 1946) 56Google Scholar ; Bettelheim, Bruno, Symbolic Wounds (London: Thames and Hudson, 1959)Google Scholar ; and , Favazza, Bodies Under Siege, 272–80Google Scholar.

¹⁰ , Egan, “The Thin Red Line,” 24.Google Scholar On the feelings of empowerment and mastery generated by self-abuse (for instance anorexia), see Bell, Rudolph M., Holy Anorexia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985) 17–20Google Scholar ; Bell argues that the phenomenological and historical voice of the subject ought to be taken into account.

¹¹ “Anonymous, “Self-help for Self-injury,” in internet document (“Self-Mutilation”); available at www.gurlpages.com., 1998.

¹² Puccini, Vicenzo, The Life of Suor Maria Maddalena de Patsi, 1619 (ed. Rogers, D. M.; English Recusant Literature 1558-1640; Yorkshire, England: Scolar, 1970) 108–9.Google Scholar

¹³ The controversy over her clinical status was generated by Dingwall's, EricVery Peculiar People: Portrait Studies in the Queer, the Abnormal and the Uncanny (New Hyde Park, NY: Clarion, 1962) 119–44.Google Scholar Dingwall regarded Maria Maddalena as a “masochistic exhibitionist,” spurring numerous vocal rebuttals. See , Bell, Holy Anorexia, 172Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Puccini, Life, 9.

¹⁵ Ibid., 50.

¹⁶ Ibid., 38, 140-41, 108-9.

¹⁷ Ibid., 78.

¹⁸ Ibid., 144.

¹⁹ Ibid., 101.

²⁰ Ibid., 20.

²¹ Mazzoni, Cristina, Saint Hysteria: Neurosis, Mysticism, and Gender in European Culture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996).Google Scholar

²² Ibid., 14; quoting Legrand du Saulle, doctor at the Salpetiere and expert on hysteria.

²³ Jung, C. G., Psychology and Religion: West and East (Bollingen Series; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969) 252–80.Google Scholar

²⁴ Washburn, Michael, The Ego and the Dynamic Ground: A Transpersonal Theory of Human Development (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995) ix.Google Scholar

²⁵ Of course, for Freud there is no such thing as the holy. Masochism is always a clinical condition, always connected with sexuality, and often with sadism. See Freud, Sigmund, Civilization and Its Discontents (trans. Strachey, James; New York: Norton, 1962) 66–67Google Scholar ; Ricoeur, Paul, Freud and Philosophy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972) 300–302.Google Scholar See also, Bonaparte, Marie, “Some Biopsychical Aspects of Sado-Masochism,” in Hanly, Margaret Ann Fitzpatrick, ed., Essential Papers on Masochism (New York: New York University Press, 1995) 432–52Google Scholar.

²⁶ Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, The Brothers Karamazov (trans. Garnett, Constance; New York: Norton, 1976) 554Google Scholar ; in some translation “vile” is “wretch” or “wicked.”

²⁷ On analgesic pain as a therapeutic device see Rey, Roslyne, The History of Pain (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

²⁸ Freud recognized three forms of masochism and reduced them all to erotogenic masochism. Moral masochism may have been consciously de-sexualized, but it originates in the Oedipus complex. In fact, Freud even asserted that “Kant's Categorical Imperative is the direct heir of the Oedipus complex.” Quoted in , Hanly, ed., Essential Papers on Masochism, 281Google Scholar.

²⁹ Klein, Melanie, Love, Guilt, and Repression (London: Hogarth, 1975)Google Scholar ; Wurmser, Leon, The Mask of Shame (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981)Google Scholar.

³⁰ Baumeister, Roy F., Masochism and the Self (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1989) 3.Google Scholar

³¹ Loewenstein, Rudolph M., “A Contribution to the Psychoanalytical Theory of Masochism,” in , Hanly, ed., Essential Papers on Masochism, 37.Google Scholar

³² See, for instance, Turner, Victor, The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndumbu Ritual (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967) 33–38Google Scholar.

³³ Kohut, Heinz, The Restoration of the Self (Madison: International Universities Press, 1996) 117.Google Scholar The interactional and the self psychology theories are far more consistent than psychoanalysis, with a systemic biological view of the human mind and with their neurological foundations.

³⁴ Ramachandran, V. S. and Blakeslee, Sandra, Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1998) 54.Google Scholar

³⁵ There is a vast literature on the effect of psychological and even cultural factors on the perception of pain. A pioneer in this area is Zborowski, Mark, People in Pain (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc., 1969).Google Scholar For comprehensive surveys and analyses see Paul Karoly and Jensen, Mark P., Multimethod Assessment of Chronic Pain (New York: Perfgamon Press, 1987)Google Scholar ; and Melzack, Ronald and Wall, Patrick D., The Challenge of Pain (New York: Basic Books, 1983)Google Scholar.

³⁶ Wall, Patrick D. and Jones, Mervyn, Defeating Pain: The War Against a Silent Epidemic (New York: Plenum Press, 1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁷ On mental/evaluative factor in pain perception, see Gatchel, Robert J. and Turk, Dennis C. eds., Psychosocial Factors in Pain: Critical Perspectives (New York: Guilford Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

³⁸ For a convenient summary of the “Gate Control Theory” see Melzack, Ronald, “Pain: Past, Present, and Future,” Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology 47 (1993) 615–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁹ Melzack's neuromatrix should not be confused with Penfield's map of the homunculus, although from a functional and epistemological point of view they are parallel. See Penfield, W. and Rasmussen, T., The Cerebral Cortex of Man: A Clinical Study of Localization of Function (New York: MacMillan, 1950) 25–27.Google Scholar The homunculus is the neurological representation of elements in the sensory and motor sequence. Regions with greater sensory sensitivity such as genitalia, lips, or toes, are represented in Penfield's map as proportionally larger within a cartoon-like figure of the body-image.

⁴⁰ Luria, A. R., The Working Brain (London: Penguin, 1973).Google Scholar The major pioneer in this field was Head, Henry, Aphasia and Kindred Disorders of Speech (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926)Google Scholar ; see also Velde, C. D. Van der, “Body Images of One's Self and of Others: Development and Clinical Significance,” American Journal of Psychiatry 142 (1985) 527–37Google ScholarPubMed.

⁴¹ The body image is “the picture that the person has of the physical appearance of his body.” Traub, A. C. and Orbach, J., “Psychological Studies of Body Image,” Archives of General Psychiatry 11 (1964) 53–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar , quotation p. 57. The body schema is “knowledge [implicit] of the body's current position and possible future positions, which the individual utilizes during movement, without even thinking.” Moss, Donald, “Brain, Body, and World: Body Image and Psychology of the Body” in Valle, Ronald S. and Holling, Steen, Existential-phenomenological Perspectives in Psychology (New York: Plenum, 1989) 64Google Scholar.

⁴² Merleau-Ponty, M., Phenomenology of Perception (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962)Google Scholar and idem, The Structure of Behavior (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963).

⁴³ James, William, Essays in Radical Empiricism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976) 289 n. 170.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Jacques Lacan, “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience,” in idem, Ecrits (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977) 1-7.

⁴⁵ Velde, C. D. Van der, “Body Images,” 531Google Scholar ; see also, Fink, Bruce, The Lacanian Subject-Between Language and Jouissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995) 37Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ These include the embodied, passionate, executive, mnemonic, unified, vigilant, conceptual and social selves. The names are not always felicitous, but the phenomenology and neurological anatomy are beyond the capacity of a historian of religion to dispute. See , Ramachandran and , Blakeslee, Phantoms, 247–55Google Scholar.

⁴⁷ Bruner, Jerome, Acts of Meaning (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990)Google Scholar and idem, Actual Minds, Possible Worlds (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986).

⁴⁸ , Luria, Working Brain, 31Google Scholar ; cultural-cognitive creations “are recognized as essential elements in the establishment of functional connections between individual parts of the brain.”

⁴⁹ Vygotsky, Lev, Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978).Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Bakan, David, Disease, Pain and Sacrifice: Toward a Psychology of Suffering (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968) 35.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Kohler, Wolfgang, Gestalt Psychology: An Introduction to New Concepts in Modern Psychology (New York: Liveright, 1992), 50–52.Google Scholar

⁵² , Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior, 47.Google Scholar

⁵³ Kelso, J. A. Scott, Dynamic Patterns: The Self-Organization of Brain and Behavior. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995).Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Ibid., 37-43.

⁵⁵ Lacan, J., The Seminar of Jacques Lacan (Book 2; trans. Tomaselli, S.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)Google Scholar ; Laing, R. D., The Divided Self (London: Tavistock, 1960)Google Scholar ; Kennedy, R., The Elusive Human Subject: A Psychoanalytical Theory of Subject Relations (New York: Free Association Books, 1998)Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ Gibson, James J., The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979)Google Scholar ; Lee, David and Reddish, P. E., “Plummeting Gannets: A Paradigm of Ecological Optics,” Nature 292 (1981) 293–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁷ , Bakan, Disease, Pain and Sacrifice, 31–38.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Freud, Sigmund, The Ego and the Id (trans. Riviere, Joan; London: Hogarth, 1950) 31.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Quoted in Gertrude and Blanck, Rubin. Ego Psychology II: Psychoanalytic Developmental Psychology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979) 16Google Scholar.

⁶⁰ Hartmann, Heinz, Essays on Ego Psychology (New York: International Universities Press, 1964).Google Scholar

⁶¹ , Blanck, Ego Psychology, 18.Google Scholar

⁶² , Kelso, Dynamic Patterns, 67Google Scholar ; Condon, William, “Cultural Microrhythms,” in Davis, Martha, ed., Interaction Rhythms: Periodicity in Communicative Behavior (New York: Human Sciences, 1982) 66Google Scholar.

⁶³ According to Melzack's “paradox of pain,” medical definition of pain as directly linked with tissue damage is wrong.

⁶⁴ , Bakan, Disease, Pain and Sacrifice, 59.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Alexander, Richard, Darwinism and Human Affairs (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1979)Google Scholar and idem, The Biology of Moral Systems (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1987).

⁶⁶ See , Blanck, Ego Psychology, 21–22.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ However, some soldiers do inflict injuries on themselves in an intentional manner, usually to remove an extreme threat, or for similarly traumatic reasons. This is true for prisoners, slaves, even animals in captivity. The “intention” to commit self-mutilation has a neurological foundation in extreme distress.

⁶⁸ This answer prevails in the literature on sacred pain. See bibliography in Glucklich, “Sacred Pain,” 391, n. 6.

⁶⁹ This topic was discussed above in the context of transpersonal psychology.

⁷⁰ , Wurmser, The Mask of Shame, 9–12.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Ibid., 9.

⁷² Kohut, Heinz, The Restoration of the Self, 127.Google Scholar

⁷³ Gomez, L., An Introduction to Object Relations (New York: New York University Press, 1997).Google Scholar

⁷⁴ , Kennedy, Elusive Human Subject, 68.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ , Ramachandran and , Blakeslee, Phantoms, 61.Google Scholar