The Psychiatric Study of Jesus

Exposition and Criticism

Albert Schweitzer, Charles R. Joy

• Publisher: Barakaldo Books
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781839745553
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

For His Doctoral Thesis, Schweitzer Chose To Write On Recent Medical Treatises Which Showed, At Least To The Authors' Satisfaction, That Jesus Was Mentally Diseased. The Book Was Published In German In 1913."Work of a major prophet....Dr. Schweitzer demolishes the published theories that Jesus was mentally abnormal....His uses of his sources are a delight to follow."—St. Louis Star-Times"It is a monument to the many-sided genius of one of the truly great men of this century. English-speaking people throughout the world will be grateful for this translation."—Quarterly Review of Biology"The very brevity of this small volume reflects the genius of Albert Schweitzer....At no point does the author appeal to the authority of revealed religion. He meets naturalists on their own grounds....The smooth translation and Introduction by Charles R. Joy and the instructive Preface by Dr. Winfred Overholser enrich the reader's comprehension and enjoyment of this classic essay"—Dr. Gordon W. Allport, Harvard University"No one is better qualified to speak of the revolutionary personality of Jesus than Schweitzer."—Boston Herald"Terse, lucid exposition."—Washington Star

THE PSYCHIATRIC STUDY OF JESUS

THE PSYCHOPATHOLOGICAL METHOD, which conceives its task to be the investigation of the mental aberrations of significant personalities in relation to their works, has recently fallen into disrepute. This is not because of the method, which with proper limitations and in the hands of professional investigators can produce and has produced valuable results, but because it has been faultily pursued by amateurs. The prerequisites which are essential for successful work in this field—exact source knowledge, adequate medical, and particularly psychiatric experience, both under the discipline of critical talents—are very seldom found together.

One often encounters in this field of study, therefore, misconceptions of the grossest kind, caused by the lack of one or another of these prerequisites and sometimes by the lack of all of them.

To form a judgment about any person on the sole basis of his acts is contrary to all psychiatric practice and has always something suspicious about it. If this is true for the present age, how much more restraint must be exercised when we are dealing with people from a very distant epoch and with imperfect and uncertain traditions! For this reason the constantly recurring instances of historical epileptics, like Mohammed, Julius Caesar, and even Napoleon I himself, seem to us very questionable and legendary. Even more uncertain is the ground on which we tread, when we endeavor to investigate in the light of modern psychiatry the minds of people from a far distant epoch.

Because of this, today’s psychiatrists are also disinclined for the most part to use the psychopathological method, partly because they do not consider modern psychiatry so perfected and stabilized that they can find a useful criterion in it for all the acts of mankind, partly because they know that every vital human activity must be understood within the conditions of its own age.

Even though the general considerations hereafter mentioned justify certain prejudices against the psychopathological literature, there are also in the nature of the problem special reasons for disinclination and these latter take on an extraordinary emotional value when it is a question of dealing psycho-pathologically with the life of Jesus, as has actually been done by various people.

All the more clearly indicated, however, seems to be the necessity of assuring oneself here of the prerequisites enumerated above.

The objective of this book is so conceived, then, that the opinions advanced by the medical writers who have dealt with Jesus should be carefully examined from the psychiatric and critical point of view.

The suspicion that the mind of Jesus might somehow have morbid characteristics found utterance in historical research long before psychiatry became interested in the person of the Nazarene. When David Friedrich Strauss began first of all to work directly with the historical material, he felt obliged to declare that Jesus, as his biography reveals, lived with the quixotic idea that he was destined to appear in the near future in a blaze of supernatural glory, surrounded by angels, on the clouds of heaven, to judge the world as the expected Messiah and to establish the Kingdom which was to follow.

In his first Life of Jesus{2} he asserts, in speaking of this matter, that Jesus must be considered from our point of view a fanatic. Immediately, however, he tries to explain that the Nazarene, even though that fanatical idea had gripped him, can be considered, nonetheless, as one in full possession of all his faculties, partly because of the fact that his expectation has its roots in the general conceptions of late Judaism.

When he wrote his second Life of Jesus in 1864, he was so vividly conscious of the fanatical in the thought of the second coming, that, as he says in a letter to Wilhelm Lang, he was inclined to consider the idea as very close to madness, and accordingly doubted whether the sayings that refer to this really originated with Jesus. Therefore, he decided to let them fall completely into the background in his portrayal of Jesus, and was reproached by various critics for apostasy from the better judgment he showed in 1835.{3}

In the last decade historical research has more and more clearly perceived that the expectation of the second coming of the Messiah is at the center of Jesus’ thought, and that it dominates his feeling, his will and his action far more rigorously than we had previously supposed. At the same time, however, the ideas expressed by David Friedrich Strauss would not be silenced. Again and again the reproach was made that the portraits of Jesus, which place in the foreground what Strauss calls the quixotic and the fanatical in the world of Jesus’ ideas, picture a personality with clearly revealed morbid traits.{4}

In the most recent phase of the study the discussion turns almost entirely upon the question of the degree to which such ideas of Jesus may be considered authentic. Indeed, a series of attempts have been made which essentially represent the Messianic claims of Jesus and the expectation of his second coming as unhistoric. According to this hypothesis the Nazarene was a simple Jewish teacher, whose followers after his death elevated him to the rank of Messiah and then proceeded to place in his mouth allusions and expressions relating to it.{5} Nevertheless, this kind of distinction between authentic and unauthentic words in the sources cannot be maintained. It must, therefore, be admitted that Jesus considered himself to be the Messiah and expected his majestic return on the clouds of heaven. The psychopathological literature about Jesus which is here in question includes the works of Dr. de Loosten,{6} Dr. William Hirsch,{7} and Dr. Binet-Sanglé;{8} alongside of these should also be mentioned the study of Emil Rasmussen, Ph.D., who has doubtless had medical counsel.{9}

Here follows a brief summary of the principal contents of these writings.

De Loosten arrives at the following conclusion.{10} Jesus, he insists, is evidently a hybrid, tainted from birth by heredity, who even in his early youth as a born degenerate attracted attention by an extremely exaggerated self-consciousness combined with high intelligence and a very slightly developed sense of family and sex. His self-consciousness slowly unfolded until it rose to a fixed delusional system, the peculiarities of which were determined by the intensive religious tendencies of the time and by his one-sided preoccupation with the writings of the Old Testament. Jesus was moved to express his ideas by the appearance of John the Baptist. Proceeding step by step{11} Jesus finally arrived at the point of relating to himself all the Scriptural promises, which had become vital again through national misfortune, and for whose ultimate glorious fulfillment all hearts hoped.

Jesus regarded himself as a completely supernatural being. For only so and not otherwise can man understand his behavior when he arrogated to himself divine rights like the forgiveness of sins.{12}

That he kept the Messianic dignity which he claimed as much as possible to himself, de Loosten explains psychologically{13} by the reflection that Jesus did not believe he had a large enough following at that time to enable him to realize his claims.

From his words to the young man who wished to attend to the burial of his father, “Follow thou me and let the dead bury their dead” (Matt. 8:22), as well as from other words, de Loosten infers, on the one side, that Jesus takes it for granted that the beginning of his divine Utopia was immediately imminent, and on the other side, that he was no longer conscious of his human nature. The journey to Jerusalem is described as a foolhardy idea{14} of achieving by a certain stroke of violence his long cherished, and a thousand times expressed, claims.

After the moment of depression in Gethsemane, his psychosis erupts at the advent of the police in all its old strength.{15} This mental disorder finds expression during the examination before the high council in which Jesus holds out the prospect to the high priest that his judges will see him sitting at the right hand of God as the Son of Man and coming on the clouds of heaven.{16} Finally, from John 7:16-20 still another idea of persecution is adduced.{17}

Concerning his emotional life de Loosten says that Jesus’ temperament was not at all uniformly serene on every occasion, and that sometimes he was liable to strange and apparently groundless moods of depression.{18} In illustration the Fourth Gospel is especially cited.{19}

Before his arrest Jesus found himself in a highly nervous, excitable state. He knew what a risky game he played and suffered greatly under the weight of fears and ominous misgivings. The completely senseless cursing of the fig tree, also becomes intelligible only as springing from this mood.{20} The way in which Jesus here takes out his ill-humor on a defenseless tree is, as we have said, to be explained only as the boiling over of severe spiritual excitement.

The driving of the money-changers out of the temple de Loosten describes as a shocking act of violence.

Among hallucinations he mentions the occurrences at the baptism by John,{21} a vision which obviously exercised a decisive influence upon Jesus’ later decisions.

This is a matter of hallucinations in the visual and auditory realms, which here certainly, as is often the case, accompany a greatly excited mind.

With what frequency Jesus had these hallucinatory visitations, we do not know, says de Loosten. He considers it probable that Jesus depends upon them even for his decisions and that similar visions like those at the baptism occurred later.

Besides the visual hallucinations, de Loosten thinks that it is highly probable that Jesus suffered from voices which seemed to him to come out of his own body.{22} Jesus placed an exalted value upon the supernatural spirit (δαιμόνιον) allegedly residing within him. A daimonion determined what he should do and leave undone, and he obeyed.{23}

The utterance of Jesus, which he takes out of the traditional text, “Someone has touched me, for I feel that power has gone out from me,”{24} de Loosten explains in this way, that Jesus had felt some kind of abnormal peripheral sensation, perhaps of the skin, and that he was trying to find an explanation for it.

The lack of sex-consciousness which is thought to be proved in the words about the eunuch (Matt. 19:12), is brought forth along with the already mentioned lack of family loyalty as a sign of psychic degeneration par excellence, which readily fits into the previously formed picture of his personality.

William Hirsch makes a diagnosis of Jesus, namely, paranoia. Everything that we know about him conforms so perfectly to the clinical picture of paranoia that it is hardly conceivable that people can even question the accuracy of the diagnosis.{25}

Hirsch traces the development of the delusion in this way.{26} We find a boy with unusual mental talents who is, nevertheless, predisposed to psychic disturbances, and within whom delusions gradually form. He spends his whole leisure in the study of the Holy Scriptures, the reading of which certainly contributed to his mental illness. When at the age of thirty he first made a public appearance, his paranoia was completely established. It is apparently one of those cases, Hirsch believes, where sudden and formless psychotic ideas are, indeed, present, but where, nonetheless, they need an external shock and a strong emotion, in order to form a typical systematic structure of paranoia.

This shock was provided for Christ by another paranoid, no other than John the Baptist.{27} Meantime Jesus’ delusions attained their most complete maturity, and when he heard of the “forerunner of the Messiah,” who was baptizing sinful people in the river Jordan, he betook himself there in order to receive baptism himself. The hallucinations which appeared on this occasion ...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• PREFATORY NOTE
• FOREWORD
• BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR FOREWORD
• INTRODUCTION-SCHWEITZER’S CONCEPTION OF JESUS
• PREFACE TO THE 1913 EDITION
• THE PSYCHIATRIC STUDY OF JESUS
• EDITOR’S NOTE