#6474 - Psychology - Optional 8: Witch-craft and Witch-hunting in early modern Europe

REVISION NOTES:

WITCHCRAFT:

PSYCHOLOGY:

1. What does evidence from trials reveal about the psychology of accused and accusers?

The general utility of psychoanalysis in history:

• Humans = humans: can draw parallels between the way our minds work today and in the past.

• Situations just expressed in diff way: “Whereas the neuroses of our unpsychological modern days… appear disguised as organic illnesses, the neuroses of those early times emerge in demonological trappings” (Freud).

• Ultimately, search for same thing – safety and survival.

• In Haizmann case, Freud suggests that the reason why the affliction stopped when he entered the Order was because it meant that “both his internal struggle and his material need came to an end” (Freud). “He wanted all along simply to make his life secure” (Freud).

• Freud addresses criticism of too much focus on small details:

• Due to the nature of this as a “neurotic phantasy” (Freud), small details are highly relevant.

• E.g. from Freud’s ‘Psychopathology’ – patient came up with number 426,718. 42 because of joke ‘if your catarrh of the nose is treated by a doctor it lasts 42 days, if it is not treated it lasts 6 weeks’. All numbers 1-7 included except 3 and 5 because he had 6 brothers and sisters, and the 3^rd and 5^th were his enemies (he was youngest). 8 because he had often thought that if his father had lived longer, he would not have been the youngest. Hence can be interpreted as desire for 3 and 5 to die in place of father.

• Can help to fill gaps in understanding (see below).

• Can help to explain subtleties (see below).

Ideas about father figures/gender roles:

• In some cases, the links to paternal ideas are clear.

• Particularly the Haizmann case.

• Was psychologically affected, therefore can be well analysed.

• Devil first appeared to man as “an honest elderly citizen” (Freud).

• De Certeau takes Freud’s analysis further by suggesting that the Brothers of Mercy perform the role of another father substitute for Haitzmann.

• Impose law of ascesis upon him, but at same time offer salvation.

• “Represents a life insurance policy… he finds a substitute for the nurturing father” (De Certeau).

• Can also see this in Regina Bartholome case:

• Regina’s images are “littered with Oedipal themes” (Roper).

• E.g. took mother’s place, successfully fulfilled Oedipal desires, feels deserves to be punished.

• E.g. first lover, Reidler, worked as a prison overseer – paternal.

• E.g. Jacob Schwenreiter shared father’s trade and even bed. His wife represented mother-figure.

• During trial, father-daughter relationship dramatized. E.g. repeated requests to return to father, ‘oh you poor father’.

• Council themselves become father figures – ‘she begs that my lords should behave to her as fathers’.

• Suggestion (Melanie Klein) that Regina retained her father’s ‘good’ image by projecting negative traits onto others.

• Also reveals details about image of God

• “God is a father-substitute; or… he is an exalted father; or… he is a copy of a father as seen and experienced in childhood” (Freud).

• Relationships with father are “perhaps ambivalent from the outset” (Freud).

• “the Evil Demon… is regarded as the antithesis of God and yet us very close to him in his nature” (Freud).

• “[man’s] hostile attitude towards his father… should have come to expression in the creation of Satan” (Freud).

• Also reveals details of anxiety to fulfil gender roles & confusion that this could cause.

• Sexual element in Haizmann case – on 2^nd occasion of visiting, had 2 pairs of breasts; in another, had a long penis ending in a snake.

• Breasts may appear to be contradiction to father idea. Is certainly unusual – THE Devil is usually “super-male” (Freud).

• Freud argues that this comes from fear of castration (the only way that he could become a lover to his father) and the corresponding “converse phantasy of castrating the father… a projection of the subject’s own femininity on to the father-substitute” (Freud).

• Mourning for father brought back these repressed feelings.

Idea of self-punishment:

• In Haizmann case, Freud believes that possession could be a self-punishment? Would be incapable of looking after himself if he could not work, and would therefore long for his father’s care even more.

• Roper uses case of Regina Bartholome to illustrate this:

• “The momentum of Regina’s trial derived in part from her own drive to accuse herself… to uncover the truth of a crime she felt herself to have committed” (Roper).

• “The sadism of the questioning process may have gratified the needs of the witch” (Roper).

Superstitious nature of society:

• Def of superstition: the superstitious person “is… inclined to attribute meaning to external chance” (Freud).

• Again, psychology is directly relevant here.

• “A large portion of the mythological conception of the world… is nothing but psychology projected into the outer world” (Freud)

• Folklore had big impact on psychology of contemps.

• Carlo Ginzburg argues that Freud overlooked this.

• Uses Freud’s wolf-man case: focuses on young, upper-MC Russian patient (27 in 1914) and infantile dream that he had.

• Window at foot of bed opened of own accord one winter’s night, white wolves sitting in walnut tree outside it. Looked like foxes/sheep dogs. 6-7 of them.

• Just stared at him.

• Was v vivid.

• Aged 3-5, was scared until 11 yo.

• Relates to beliefs of ‘Benendanti’ – a do-gooding, witch-fighting Friuli sect – and other similar people (Baltic werewolves, Dalmation kersniki).

• Claimed to be able to travel to world of dead.

• Claimed to have been born with teeth, with the caul (birth membrane on head) or in the 12 days Christmas-Epiphany – wolf-man was born with the caul on Christmas day.

• Nurse, ‘njanja’, = known to be pious and superstitious. Would have explained to him caul, told fairy tales.

• Patient had said that being born with the caul meant that he had always looked upon himself as special, guarded. Problems with WC arose when he contracted gonorrhoea because it disproved this.

• Basically, wolf-man case shows how cases are “impregnated by a much more ancient mythical element” (Ginzburg).

• Hardship of times could have made superstitions worse: Freud talks of how people who have a repressed desire to do evil things are more likely to fear evil.

• Could help to explain why “neighbourhood antagonism was usually an aggravating factor” (Demos) in New England cases (e.g. Mary and Hugh Parsons, Springfield, 1651).

2. How useful are psychological approaches?

• Psychology and WC = inextricably linked.

• Freud talks of the “projection of these mental entities onto the external world which the middle ages carried out”.

• “The most striking observation about witches is that they gave free rein to a whole gamut of hostile and aggressive feelings” (John Demos).

• E.g. Mercy Short’s fits started after aggressive encounter with witch Sarah Good.

• “A phenomenon such as witchcraft… demands explanation… in psychological terms” (Roper).

• Joyce MacDougall’s idea of ‘the theatre of the mind’ – using real people to express internal feelings.

• E.g. Haizmann case: “he was suffering from melancholic depression… we can see that what we are dealing with really is a case history” (Freud).

• Essential structure of human mind = the same.

• “Historical interpretation as we undertake it day by day nearly always depends… on the assumption of a measure of resemblance” (Roper).

• Be careful: only applies to pre-Oedipal stages.

• Ultimately, search for same thing – safety and survival.

• Can help to fill gaps in understanding, of which there are many about WC.

• E.g. why mainly women, why certain areas.

• Michel de Certeau argues that psychoanalysis comes in where social/economic explanations leave something to be desired.

• E.g. in Salem trials, “Economic position is not… a significant datum” (Demos).

• E.g. why such a high focus on orality in New England cases?

• E.g. trial of George Burroughs – ‘Biting was one of the ways which the witches used for the vexation of the sufferers...