Religious experience and self-psychology: korean christianity and the 1907 revival movement 1st edit
Religious Experience and Self-Psychology: Korean Christianity and the 1907 Revival Movement 1st Edition Jung Eun Jang (Auth.)
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A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am indebted to many colleagues for the preparation and completion of this book in one way or another in the Department of Christian Studies at Ewha Womans University. They not only encouraged me to finish this book but also are engaged in conversations about Korean Christianity. I would like to express my earnest appreciation to Dr. Angella Son who was enormously helpful in revising the manuscript and provided theoretical insight for writing this book. I am grateful to Dr. Mi Ja Sa who helped me shape my point of view to analyze religious experiences in terms of psychology. I also gratefully acknowledge my students at Ewha for their valuable comments and crucial contribution to this project.
My deepest gratitude is extended to my wife, You Sun Yim, who always stood by me through the good times and bad. Many thanks go in particular to my son, Jun Geon, and my daughter, Juna, who have been proud of my work and who have shown their positive regard for my research. I am deeply grateful to my parents and brothers who supported and encouraged me with their unbounded confidence in my ability. They helped me realize my potential and always prayed for my study.
CHAPTER 1
Psychological Analysis of the 1907 Revival Movement
1 CONTEXTS FOR THE STUDY
The Korean Protestant Church has grown rapidly since Christian missionaries first landed in Korea in April 1885. Scholars agree that the driving force of this growth in Korean Protestant Christianity was the 1907 Revival Movement. In addition, the 1907 Revival is viewed as an important factor in the maturation of the Korean Church’s structure and theology. Therefore, the history of the Korean Protestant Church cannot be adequately described without mentioning this Movement.
The Korean Revival Movement of 1907 is referred to as the great revival meeting that took place from January 2 to January 22, 1907, in the Jang Dae Hyeon Church, located in Pyeongyang, Korea. However, the 1907 Revival Movement can be viewed as a subsequent series of revival meetings and Bible conferences that occurred following a prayer meeting of the missionaries at Wonsan in 1903 that is generally considered to be the origin of the 1907 Movement. In this book, I utilize the 1907 Revival Movement to signify a series of revival meetings and conferences that occurred in the early 1900s, in particular, from the missionaries’ prayer meeting at Wonsan in 1903 to the Pyeongyang Revival Movement in 1907, because these meetings were historically closely interconnected. My psychological study is interested in the reason why these successive revival meetings occurred during this specific period.
J.E. Jang, Religious Experience and Self-Psychology, DOI 10.1057/978-1-349-95041-6_1
The 1907 Movement was shaped by the climate of the era in which it occurred, which is considered by many to be one of the darkest periods in Korean history. In the early 1900s, Korean people were burdened by war, especially by the control of the Japanese since 1905, when the Japanese protectorate was established. At the same time, Korean people were at the mercy of corrupt officials and severe exploitation by the Japanese government. The loss of a nation’s identity and basic rights and devaluation by others can certainly cause collective feelings of powerlessness, helplessness, and hopelessness. This psychological instability had an enormous effect on the development of the 1907 Movement, which was characterized by sensitivity to sins and wrongdoings, a deep sense of defeat and shame, petition for forgiveness, and confession of sins in public, in addition to a feeling of peace and joy.
However, the influences of the psychological processes involved in the 1907 Revival Movement have neither been previously acknowledged nor studied. Recently, there has been a substantial amount of research and events such as symposia and seminars in the Korean academic world to consider the background and influences of the movement, to celebrate the centennial of the movement. However, most research has centered on the historical, theological, and spiritual meaning of the movement, as well as on its significance. As a consequence, the psychological processes and their influences on the 1907 Revival have been neglected.
By overlooking the psychological aspects of the 1907 Revival Movement, earlier studies do not have the following benefits that a psychological approach can bring to studies on the movement: (1) The psychological approach enriches the historical account of the 1907 Revival Movement by paying attention to the emotional and unconscious basis of historical thought and action. By doing so, it can enlarge and refine concepts of the explanation for human religious experiences and conduct in the movement by accounting for the emotional origin and psychological motivation. (2) It places a focus on the oppressed and devalued groups or classes who had religious experiences in the 1907 Revival, as opposed to an emphasis on significant individuals or abstract theological discussion. This helps to bring out the liveliness of the world of lived experiences from the perspective of those who lived it. (3) It explains how religious experiences, theological doctrines, and religious practices of the movement fostered the psychological health of the Korean people participating in the movement by meeting these psychological needs. In order to bring depth, my study thus focuses mainly on the positive psychological functions of
religious experiences for mental health. However, I fully acknowledge that the negative psychological functions of religious experiences were also present at the 1907 Revival.
In this book, I argue that there were significant fundamental psychological processes that occurred in the 1907 Revival Movement. In particular, I bring Heinz Kohut’s self psychology into the constructive dialogue and engagement with the religious experiences during the 1907 Revival Movement. The self-psychological approach to the revival movement led me to propose that the sense of defeatedness and helplessness that the Korean people experienced under the Japanese occupation can be identified with what Kohut calls “self-fragmentation” of the Korean group self, and that the psychological processes in the movement facilitate potential for the narcissistic nourishment of the self, leading to maintaining cohesiveness of its sense of self. An integral aspect of this study centers on the attempt to explore and identify how the religious experiences met the psychological needs of the Korean people in the movement through the selfobject experiences of idealization, mirroring, and twinship, as presented in Kohut’s psychology of the self. In other words, the presence of these psychological dynamics functions as a supportive selfobject environment, according to Kohut’s self psychology. Thus, this book contends that the examination of the psychological processes in the 1907 Korean Revival Movement, based on Heinz Kohut’s self psychology, can shed light on religious experiences as selfobject experiences and, thereby, reveal the positive function of religious experiences for human beings and their psychological health.
2 THE METHOD AND UNDERLYING THEORY OF THE STUDY
The principal methodology employed in this study is psychohistorical. Psychohistory has many different meanings and uses. The most basic definition of psychohistory is the “psychological study of history” with the “use of any one of many different psychological theories (or any combination of these theories) for the purpose of historical analysis.”1 In the broadest sense, psychohistory can be understood as history informed by psychology or psychology informed by history.2 The framework of this method tries to merge psychological theory with historical inquiry. Considering that psychohistory is the psychoanalytically oriented approach to history,
it can be said that it seeks to delve into the unconscious motives of historic people’s or group’s attitudes and actions with the help of contemporary psychodynamic theory.
Freud analyzed the characters of famous figures such as Moses and Leonardo da Vinci with his psychoanalytic theory. However, his paradigm of individual psychopathology focused on internal drives and hidden conflicts. Thus, there was limited room for discussion regarding the relationship between the individual psyche and the historical environment. In his first biographical study, Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood, published in 1910, Freud quite clearly said that the “aim of our work has been to explain the inhibitions in Leonardo’s sexual life and in his artistic activity.”3 He was not interested in the full life of Leonardo, entangled with its historical context. Freud’s evident focus was directed toward Leonardo’s sexual conflicts and their manifestations in his artistic form.
On the other hand, Erikson understood how important culture could be for an individual. Considering Erikson’s work as the third of his four paradigms of psychohistory, Lifton, a psychohistorian, noted that Erikson was concerned with “the kinds of inner conflicts illuminated by the Freudian tradition,” but “he placed the great man…within a specific historical context.”4 In his work Young Man Luther, in which he combines the clinical methods of analysis with exhaustive cultural studies to deal with Luther’s identity issues, Erikson expressed his understanding of how important a specific historical context could influence an individual, by saying, “we cannot lift a case history out of history.”5 Bruce Mazlish, a professor emeritus of history at MIT, also posited that in its best moments, psychohistory “attempts to understand the social conditions shaping the development of the individual psyche and then the psychological factors forming the social conditions.”6 In addition, there have been many studies that pay attention to life histories and demonstrate how social paradigms, historical conditions, and cultural views impact the person.7
Psychohistory is frequently criticized by traditional historians because of its disregard for conscious purpose and the conjectural and reductionist nature of its explanations of historical causality, based on incomplete evidence of early childhood experiences and relations. Runyan identifies three specific critiques of reductionism as applied to psychohistory: (1) that psychological factors are emphasized at the expense of external social and historical factors, (2) that psychobiography focuses excessively on psychopathological processes and provides insufficient attention to normality and creativity, and (3) that it tends to explain the adult character
and behavior exclusively in terms of early childhood experiences, while neglecting later formative processes and influences.8
Considering the problem of reductionism in psychohistory, it is important for a psychohistorian to choose a psychological theory that is appropriate to the historical subject matter, acknowledging the cultural contexts and historical factors and reflecting on the formative influences of adulthood on the inner world. Psychohistorical theory and practice can be classified according to the following psychological lens employed for the study of history:9 (1) Freudian psychohistorians focus largely on “the discovery and interpretation of suppressed childhood traumas in the unconscious,” and they tried to find out reliable sources regarding the earlier periods of historical figures.10 (2) In the case of Erikson, his development of the new form of psychohistory in the direction of psychoanalytical ego psychology, with particular focus on issues of identity and, more recently, on varieties of psychohistory, employs ego psychology that takes note of the ego’s functions that mediate between the id and the superego and reality. (3) The object relations theory emphasizes on the psychic structures that comprise introjected objects that can be seen as the intrapsychic representations of significant figures in the infant’s life. The notion of intrapsychic objects is very useful in psychologically interpreting history, because a specific historical and cultural context represented by values and ideals embodies the individual’s object world.11 (4) Lastly, some psychohistorians use the selfpsychological approach, which holds that the development of narcissism follows its own line and that disturbances in this development generate a weakened and fragmented sense of self.12
In choosing a particular psychological method, I have been guided by the question of which psychological tradition seems most suitable to the themes presented in the 1907 Revival Movement, which seems to be closely associated with the devaluation of the self due to the experiences of oppression by others and subsequent recovery by religious experiences. I also considered the critique of reductionism by choosing a psychological approach that can respond to the criticism. I have chosen Kohut’s psychoanalytic self-psychological concepts of selfobjects and selfobject experiences in building a framework for psychologically analyzing the movement because he has developed an innovative understanding of human motivation by his proposals about the nature and functioning of the self, not from the pathological but from the formative perspective. Through the lens of his self psychology, the religious experiences of the individuals participating in the movement can be depicted as therapeutic
experiences, prompting them to advance from a state of fragmented self to that of a cohesive one. In other words, while the Korean people experienced oppression and domination through the power of the corrupted officials and the Japanese government at that time, some of them had the opportunity to satisfy their narcissistic needs of mirroring, idealizing, and twinship through their participation in the 1907 Revival Movement.
In addition, Kohut’s self psychology is very useful in delving into the external social, cultural, and historical influences on an individual’s psychological development. His concept of selfobject as an expansive concept of object can include a non-human object, such as a society and/or a religion as a whole. In other words, historical conditions and religious experiences can play the role of selfobjects that designate objects experienced as a part of the self. Therefore, Kohut’s self psychology can be viewed as a proper psychological theory in examining the relationship between an individual and social situations, which need to be the key aspects of the updated psychohistorical approach for being open to the criticism of reductionism by traditional psychohistorians.
Furthermore, the work of Kohut offers a holistic perspective about the historical issues related to what people feel and what motivates them to act. The psychoanalytic drive theory has always pushed scholars to explore the evidence of early experiences where historical sources are unusually insufficient because it insists that one’s childhood, especially the Oedipal period, is a source of adult behavior, character, conflicts, etc. However, for Kohut, trauma can occur at any point in the life cycle and exists in any event in which selfobjects fail to sustain or nourish the self. Therefore, Kohut’s theories permit one to look at history in its entirety, with equal importance to both the past and the present.
To sum up, my work uses the psychohistorical approach, which considers the close relationship between one’s individual inner world and specific historical conditions. Thus, I will probe into the historical and political situations of the Korean people in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, who were victimized by wars and by the Japanese protectorate in 1905. In addition, I will analyze how the historical conditions produced an effect on the inadequate sense of the inner self of Koreans. I will also examine, with reference to Kohut’s theory, how the religious experiences expressed in the 1907 Revival Movement enabled the followers to experience the selfobject needs by which their fragmented selves were able to maintain a cohesive sense of self and, at the same time, how this psychological growth influenced the social and historical conditions of that era.
3
RESOURCES FOR THE STUDY
The primary resources for this study were books and publications written by missionaries sent to Korea. As Protestant missions opened in Korea, the pioneer missionaries wrote books about the culture and history of Korea, church growth, and revival movements, which include descriptions and testimonies of the 1907 Revival. The following missionaries left behind an important record in the history of the Korean Protestant Church and its development through the revival movement: James Gale, George Jones and Arthur Noble, Horace Underwood, Alfred Wasson, Harry Rhodes, Allen Clark, Samuel Moffett, James Fisher, William Blair, and Bruce Hunt. They also sent home reports regarding their missionary work, which were published in periodicals such as The Korean Repository, 1892, 1895–1898; The Korea Review, 1900–1905; and The Korean Mission Field, 1898–1945. While documents written by missionaries are abundant, Koreans, themselves, did not leave records with historical information about the revival movement during the first thirty years of the Protestant mission efforts in Korea.
One can question the validity of the missionaries’ accounts as primary materials to understand what happened in the movement, because their description can be distorted by their religious interests and perspectives. It would appear quite reasonable to assume that the missionaries’ testimonies and reports were colored, and even distorted, by their sociocultural, theological, imperial, and cultural frames. For example, many missionaries viewed the Korean people as an ethnic group that is lazy, uncivilized, and superstitious, who needed to be civilized with the help of the Western culture and Christianity. This shows that even if they did not intentionally distort what they observed in the movement, their descriptions were influenced by their own biased perspectives and worldviews. However, that does not mean that their descriptions are not valuable for this psychohistorical research, because my interest in this psychohistorical study lies not in the missionaries’ religious and spiritual interpretation of the revival movement, but rather in their descriptions of religious experiences during the movement. A series of common patterns are displayed in their descriptions of the religious experiences of the 1907 Revival Movement. This book attempts to focus on the descriptions of the repeated patterns of religious experiences evident in the missionaries’ delineation of the 1907 Movement.
More importantly, the missionaries’ articles and reports in the journals and newspapers have been used as credible resources by the scholars in the Korean church history in their research and analysis of the 1907 Revival Movement. For instance, according to Jeong Min Seo, who collected, organized, and classified materials about the 1907 Revival Movement, the missionaries’ reports and articles are useful to deeply understand the contents of the religious experiences because of the consistent patterns reported about the movement, even if they do not examine their social meaning and reverberations.13 Therefore, even if the missionaries’ descriptions of the 1907 Revival Movement were influenced by their sociocultural, ethnic, and religious backgrounds, their descriptions are enough to analyze the repeated patterns of religious experiences of the movement.
Korean scholars have examined the 1907 Revival Movement since Korea’s liberation from Japan, and their research constitutes secondary sources that can be classified into two groups according to their theological perspectives: the conservative group and the progressive group. The conservative group insists that the 1907 Revival can be considered as the original form to which the Korean churches ought to return as a model of revivalism. On the other hand, the progressive group asserts that the revival movement can be criticized from the perspective that it quieted the anti-Japanese struggle of the church members under Japanese colonization and changed the fate of the Korean churches, making them historically irrelevant today.
Emphasizing on the positive effects of the movement, Baek Nak Joon claims that the movement brought a moral sense into the hearts of some Korean people and established religious practices such as the early morning prayer meeting and Bible study, which have contributed to the growth of Protestantism in Korea.14 Min Kyung Bae maintains that the religious experiences of the 1907 Revival Movement made it possible for some Korean people to participate in the historical crisis and societal problems.15 Park Jong Hyun asserts that the 1907 Revival Movement contributed to resisting the Japanese oppression by establishing an identity as Christians.16 However, the historian, Lee Man Yeol, argued that the 1907 Revival Movement weakened the Korean sense of independence from Japan by focusing on the topic of inner faith and, thus, accelerated the depoliticization of Korean churches.17 No Dae Joon contended that the movement was planned by missionaries to maintain the religiosity of Korean churches against the social consciousness and control of the churches
and Christians.18 Woo Wan Yong asserted that the movement can be seen as a model of non-nationalistic behaviors and caused the nationalistic Christians to leave the churches.19
One might wonder about the roots of the differences between the conservative and the progressive points of view. One can argue that the differences originate from the antithetical theological understanding about the separation of the Church and the State, sin and repentance, spirituality, and the practice of the revivalism that the early missionaries brought to Korea in the late nineteenth century. However, these studies focusing on the theological interests inadvertently exclude the perspective of the common people who underwent oppression and exploitation by the Japanese government and corrupt officials in the Joseon dynasty. These studies did not deal with what the 1907 Revival really meant to the Korean people at that time and how the people experienced the movement.
On the other hand, some research was based on the sociocultural perspective. For example, Lee Cheol attempted to explain the rise and decline of the 1907 Revival Movement on the basis of Max Weber’s theory of charisma. In his opinion, the presence of “charismatic leadership,” as per Weber’s sociological theory, had a decisive effect on the thriving of the revival movement in the early twentieth century in Joseon.20 Seo Jung Min, a historian of Korean church history, dealt with the social responses to and effects of the 1907 Revival Movement by collecting news articles about the movement that appeared in print media, investigating how people dealt with such movements socially.21
Such work, which attempts to get in touch with the voices of the ordinary people, is highly valued. Similarly, this book analyzes the characteristics of the religious experiences of the movement, from the psychohistorical perspective, in order to account for the emotional meaning and psychological motivation of the religious behaviors of the common people involved in the 1907 Revival Movement. This makes it possible to reveal the psychological needs of the oppressed ordinary people, which were ignored in the studies that focused on the theological and spiritual perspectives.
As for Kohut’s psychohistorical materials, Kohut, unlike Erikson, never published a fully developed study of a historical event or figure. However, he mentioned many historical cases to explain his theories. Among them, he wrote about Winston Churchill, whose charismatic leadership healed the fragmented group self and played a positive role in sustaining its sense
of self. In an early paper, Kohut illustrated the role of what he then called the “grandiose self” in determining personality, through Churchill’s life. He analyzed Churchill’s uncanny ability to free himself from apparently hopeless situations and attributed such behavior to Churchill’s grandiosity that was not adequately guided by his ideal.22
At several points, Kohut also commented on the demonic and perplexing figure of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. In his writing, Kohut considers Hitler as a pathological narcissist who tried to channel his unresolved narcissism into politics. Hitler was able to function as a compensatory selfobject for the German people who had suffered the defeat of World War I (WWI) because he mirrored their narcissistic injuries. In their weakened condition in maintaining their narcissistic equilibrium, the Germans “were ready to see in Hitler and in the National Socialist Party a chance for the deployment of the narcissism of the archaic grandiose self to which they had regressed.”23 In Kohut’s opinion, in times of crisis, these primitive and unstable identifications “take place always in relation to a single dominant figure who, by his presence, is able to give instant relief to the diseased group self.”24 This “diseased group self” is unable to sustain national or cultural cohesion in the face of defeat. The Nazis exploited the narcissistic rage of the “diseased group self” of the German people and their sensibilities about their losses by their defeat in WWI. Kohut’s psychohistorical materials provide a basic direction to this book, which deals with the impact of religious experiences on the “diseased group self” of Koreans around 1907, the period following the fall of the Joseon dynasty, the murder of Queen Min, and the ongoing corruption and brutality at the hands of the Japanese forces.
In addition, a sample of the most influential contributions in the new psychohistorical studies of self psychology includes Thomas A. Kohut, the son of Heinz Kohut, and his application of self-psychological theories to the study of historical figures and events, such as his study of Wilhelm II, The Kaiser, and the Germans;25 Charles Strozier’s utilization of self psychology in a study of Lincoln,26 in an edited collection of psychohistorical approaches to the leader,27 and in a psychohistorical examination of the apocalyptic outlook of fundamentalists in America;28 and Hyman L. Muslin and Thomas H. Jobe’s psychohistorical analysis of Lyndon Baines Johnson, the thirty-sixth president of the United States from the viewpoint of self psychology.29
4
CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE STUDY OF THE 1907
REVIVAL MOVEMENT
The 1907 Revival Movement played a significant role in the rise and development of Korean Christianity. Thus, its study has implications for the contemporary Korean Church that has experienced long-run stagnation. In particular, the psychohistorical approach of this book contributes to its academy and society in the following ways.
First, the book will add another level of psychohistorical understanding to the existent body of scholarship about the 1907 Korean Revival Movement. Many scholars’ studies on the movement have centered on the theological and spiritual characteristics of the movement. In their research, they have generated a variety of opinions regarding the movement in accordance with their theological positions. There has been, however, no attempt to analyze the psychological background or to understand the movement from the perspective of the oppressed people who had religious experiences through this movement. The psychohistorical approach employed in my work attempts to fill this gap in scholarship on the movement. It tries to understand the emotional origin of the religious behavior and experiences of the oppressed Koreans at that time, by combining the insights of psychotherapy with historical inquiry.
Secondly, the book is the first psychoanalytical self-psychological analysis that explores the 1907 Korean Revival Movement. An integral aspect of this study centers on the attempt to explore and identify what makes the religious experiences in the movement meet the psychological needs of the Korean people who participated in the movement employing the practices of idealization, mirroring, and twinship, as presented in Kohut’s psychology of the self. In other words, the presence of these psychological dynamics functions as a supportive selfobject environment according to Kohut’s theory. This implies the positive psychological aspects of religious experience for human maturation and development. While Freud had a negative perspective on religion, this book reveals the therapeutic functions involved in the religious experiences, such as conversion, repentance, and prayer, through the examination of the psychological processes involved in the movement. In addition, it also reveals how the theological concepts and images can be used for the psychological growth and development of people.
Lastly, my work is also significant in that it provides an opportunity for the Korean Church to think about how to address the current problems
related to the churches in the Korean society, by restoring their selfobject functions. The Korean economy has grown rapidly for the last three decades at the expense of the worth of the inner self. The Korean churches, which have advanced along with the economic development, have also sought endless expansion, leading to the ill effects of excessive materialism and the pursuit of power. As a result of this self-immersed attitude, the growth of Korean churches has been stunted, and their confidence has been lost. In this period of the churches’ stagnation, the psychohistorical analysis of the 1907 Revival Movement can help the churches to reflect on their function as a selfobject in the society and to accordingly provide necessary social action, relevant theological ideas, and pastoral strategies that support and strengthen the psychological health of the Korean people, by considering how the movement satisfies the mirroring and idealizing needs of common people.
5 OUTLINE OF CHAPTERS
This book starts by probing Heinz Kohut’s self psychology in terms of his key concepts of selfobject, group self, and selfobject experiences, such as idealizing, mirroring, and twinship experiences by which the 1907 Revival Movement is illuminated and investigated. In Kohut’s view, narcissism is not a self-preoccupation or self-love. Rather, he considered it as one of the object relationships, similar to that observed in object love. However, while in object love, the object is experienced as separate from the self, in narcissism, the object is experienced as part of the self. Kohut terms the object experienced in narcissism as a selfobject and develops the concept of selfobject experiences as the quality of the relationship between the self and the selfobject.
The third chapter examines the psychological state of the Korean group self in terms of its matrix of relationships with selfobjects. The Joseon dynasty introduced Jujahak , one of the branches of neo-Confucianism, as its religious ideology and functioned as a signifi cant selfobject for the Korean group self, sustaining the image of its self-worth and a sense of self-cohesion in the early years of the Joseon dynasty. However, it gradually began to fail to sustain and mirror its selfobject needs due to the disruption of the peasant economy and political system that supported the Confucian society, and the changing international circumstances in the latter part of the reign of the Joseon dynasty.
Consequently, the Korean group self gradually began to be devaluated because of the loss of the selfobjects in the late Joseon period. However, the disruption to the sense of self reached its peak in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The third chapter describes the process of devaluation of the Korean group self that occurred during the Joseon dynasty.
In the fourth chapter, the 1907 Revival Movement is analyzed in terms of the concepts of selfobject experiences through which a narcissistic personality can have a chance to experience psychological healing. In particular, in this study I explore the idealizing, mirroring, and twinship experiences manifested in religious experiences in the 1907 Revival Movement, and its implication for the mental health of the participants of the movement, whose development was disrupted by their sense of despair and hopelessness caused by the national crisis during that era. I argue that significant fundamental psychological processes were involved in the 1907 Revival, which can be examined by bringing Heinz Kohut’s self psychology into constructive dialogue and engagement with religious experiences during the movement. I propose that the sense of defeatedness and helplessness that Korean people experienced under the Japanese occupation can be identified as what Kohut called “self-fragmentation” of the Korean group self. In addition, the psychological processes in the movement facilitated the potential for the narcissistic nourishment of the self leading to renewed self-esteem, maintenance of a sense of selfcohesion, and empowerment of the Korean people who participated in the movement.
An integral aspect of this study centers on the attempt to explore and identify what made the religious experiences of the participants in the movement meet the psychological needs of the participants, namely, idealization, mirroring, and twinship, as presented in Kohut’s psychology of the self. In other words, the examination of the psychological processes in the 1907 Korean Revival Movement, based on Heinz Kohut’s self psychology, can shed light on the role of religious experiences as selfobject experiences and, thereby, inform how a religion can be relevant to human beings and their psychological maturation. In the fifth chapter, therefore, I look at the implications of this discussion about the relationship between religious experiences and psychological maturation and make several suggestions for Korean churches, to help them become more relevant selfobjects to the Korean people today.
In the final chapter, Kohut’s concept of selfobject is illuminated in terms of the concept of sublimation. This chapter describes that Freud’s interpretation and positive comment on mystic practices were complemented and developed by Kohut’s concept of selfobject that paved the way for religious sublimation. Religious experiences function as sublimation by performing their selfobject roles. It concludes that 1907 Revival Movement in Korea provided a way of sublimating the narcissistic deficit of the Korean group self and asks whether the present Korean Protestant churches are functioning in the role of regressive religion or providing a way of sublimation.
NOTES
1. Richard W. Noland, “Psychohistory, Theory and Practice,” The Massachusetts Review 18, no. 2 (1977): 295.
2. George M. Kren and Leon Rappoport, eds., Varieties of Psychohistory (New York: Springer Publishing. Co., 1976), 1–14.
3. Ibid., 131.
4. Robert Jay Lifton and Charles B. Strozier, “Psychology and History,” in Psychology and its Allied Disciplines: Psychology and the Social Sciences, ed. Marc H. Bornstein (Hillsdale, NJ: Psychology Press, 1984), 168.
5. Erik H. Erikson, Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History (New York: Norton, 1962), 15–16.
6. Bruce Mazlish, “What Is Psycho-history?” in Varieties of Psychohistory, eds. George M. Kren and Leon Rappoport (New York: Springer Publishing. Co., 1976), 21.
7. William McKinley Runyan, Life Histories and Psychobiography: Explorations in Theory and Method (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 12.
8. Ibid., 208–209.
9. Jacques Szaluta, Psychohistory: Theory and Practice (New York: Peter Lang, 1999), 117–170.
10. Harry Ritter, Dictionary of Concepts in History, annotated edition (New York: Greenwood, 1986), 347.
11. Hughes shows how object relations can be used in psychohistory in the work on relations between British and German statesmen preceding the outbreak of World War I. Judith M. Hughes, Emotion and High Politics: Personal Relations at the Summit in Late Nineteenth-Century Britain and Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983).
12. Thomas Kohut draws on self psychology to elucidate the historical significance of Wilhelm II’s personality, his impact on the German people, and
their influence on him. Thomas A. Kohut, Wilhelm II and the Germans: A Study in Leadership (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).
13. Jeong Min Seo, “Hangukgyohoe Chogi Daebuheunge Daehan Sahoejeok Baneung [A Social Response to Early Revival Movement of Korean Church],” Korean Christianity and History 26 (2007): 89, 93.
14. Nak Joon Baek, A History of Korean Protestantism [Hangukgaesingyosa] (Seoul: Yonsei University Press, 1973).
15. Kyung Bae Min, Gyohoewa Minjok [Church and Nationality] (Seoul: Korean Christian Publishing, 1981).
16. Jong Hyun Park, “Hangukgyohoeui Sinangnaeyeongwa Geu Oeyeonguchoun Sanggwangwang Gye Yeongu [A Study on the Relationship Between the Form of Internal-Combustion and the OutReach of the Korea Church]” (Ph.D. diss., Yonsei University Press, 2000).
17. Man Yeol Lee, Hanguk Gidokgyowa Minjokuisik [Korean Christianity and National Consciousness] (Seoul: Knowledge Industry, 1991).
18. Dae Joon No, “1907Nyeon Gaesingyo Daebuheungundongui Yeoksajeok Seonggyeok [Historical Characteristics of the 1907 Revival Movement],” The Study of Korean Christian History 15, 16 (1986).
19. Wan Yong Woo, Biungwa Seopriui Minjok Gyohoesa [National Church History of Misfortune and Providence] (Seoul: Mokyang Book Company, 1991).
20. Cheol Lee, “A Sociological Study on the Cause of the Rise and Decline of the Pyongyang Great Revival of 1907,” Phenomenon and Awareness 32, no. 1 (2008): 109–27.
21. Jeong Min Seo, “Hangukgyohoe Chogi Daebuheunge Daehan Sahoejeok Baneung [A Social Response to the Early Revival Movement of the Korean Church],” Korean Christianity and History 26 (2007): 81–113.
22. Heinz Kohut, “Forms and Transformations of Narcissism,” in Essential Papers on Narcissism, ed. Andrew P. Morrison (New York: New York University Press, 1986), 61–87.
23. Heinz Kohut, Self Psychology and the Humanities: Reflections on a New Psychoanalytic Approach, ed. Charles B. Strozier (New York: W.W. Norton, 1985), 67.
24. Ibid., 83.
25. Thomas A. Kohut, “Psychohistory as History,” The American Historical Review 91, no. 2 (1986): 336–354; Thomas A. Kohut, Wilhelm II and the Germans: A Study in Leadership (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).
26. Charles B. Strozier, Lincoln’s Quest for Union: A Psychological Portrait (Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2001); Charles B. Strozier, “Lincoln and the Crisis of the 1850s: Thoughts on the Group Self.,” in The Leader:
Psychological Essays, ed. Charles B. Strozier, Daniel Offer, and Oliger Abdyli (New York: Springer, 2011), 57–76.
27. Charles B. Strozier, Daniel Offer, and Oliger Abdyli, eds., The Leader: Psychological Essays (New York: Springer, 2011).
28. Charles B. Strozier, Apocalypse: On the Psychology of Fundamentalism in America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994); Charles B. Strozier, “Christian Fundamentalism, Nazism, and the Millennium,” Psychohistory Review 18, no. 2 (1990): 207–217.
29. Hyman L. Muslin and Thomas H. Jobe, Lyndon Johnson: The Tragic Self, a Psychohistorical Portrait (New York: Insight Books, 1991).
CHAPTER 2
Kohut’s Self Psychology: Selfobject and Selfobject Experiences
1 A PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SELF
Most psychiatrists and psychoanalysts regard Heinz Kohut (1913–1981) as one of the most important figures in the area of psychoanalytic therapy in the twentieth century. His creation of self psychology brought about a transformation in the psychoanalytic point of view. In 1984, Howard and Margaret Baker surveyed leading American psychiatrists, who were asked to consider the most important developments in their field in the last decade. In this survey, only thirteen books and one article were chosen by the respondents, and Heinz Kohut was mentioned twice, with his books The Analysis of the Self and The Restoration of the Self. 1
Kohut’s self psychology was created as a result of his clinical work with patients who suffered from narcissistic personality disorders. He observed the activation of the narcissistic transferences in the therapeutic relationship with the narcissistic patients and had a clear view of the dilemma of these people. Specific emotional states of emptiness and depression were exhibited in the specific transferences, and these differences became evident when the relationship with the therapist was interrupted by the empathic failures of the therapist. The patients exhibited a “depleted self,” which had a tendency to be fragile, fragmented, and disintegrated.2 Kohut’s careful observation of these patients and conceptualization of the narcissistic transferences enabled him to understand the patients’ suffering related to narcissistic personality disorders, which were inaccessible to the classical psychoanalytic theory.
J.E. Jang, Religious Experience and Self-Psychology, DOI 10.1057/978-1-349-95041-6_2
17
Kohut’s clinical experiences made him reflect on the meaning of the term narcissism. It has been well known that he distinctly contributed to recognizing narcissism as “the most central and salient aspect of the psychological functioning…of all people.”3 He understood narcissism as having its own independent trajectory of development within a person. In the “Thoughts on Narcissism and Narcissistic Rage,” he declared, “if I were asked what I considered to be the most important point to be stressed about narcissism, I would answer: its independent line of development, from the primitive to the mature, adaptive, and culturally valuable.”4
From this perspective, the development of the narcissistic self consists of two separate developmental trajectories, rather than a single one from the primitive stage of narcissism to object love, as purported by Freud.5 Kohut postulated “two separate and largely independent developmental lines: one which leads from autoerotism via narcissism to object love; another which leads from autoerotism via narcissism to higher forms and transformations of narcissism.”6 For him, narcissism has its own developmental trajectory, which reaches its own mature forms, which are distinct from object love. Kohut’s discovery was attributed to a new scientific methodology of “vicarious introspection,” or “empathy,” by which an analyst can obtain access to the psychic reality of the patients’ inner world and collect its data. Freud’s psychoanalysis was constructed based on the ideal of scientific objectivity that prevailed in the nineteenth-century science. In Freud’s view, dispassionate objectivity is required for investigating human beings’ inner lives.7
Within Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, which should be explained from the perspective of scientific mechanism, the structure of the psyche is biologically determined by drives or libido composed of love and aggression. In his opinion, all types of psychopathologies are caused by conflicts between the libido and the censoring force, which is later internalized into the human internal world, in the form of the superego. The stereotyped form representing such conflicts is the Oedipal complex in which a child struggles with the conflict between its desire for the mother and restriction by the father. In the classical theory, orality and anality express defensive retreats from an Oedipal position to regressive points in one’s psychosexual development. Freud attributed the psychopathologies of his patients to a fixation of the organization of drives. In his view, analysts require neutrality in the relationship with patients and should not satisfy the patients’ psychological needs. Instead, analysts can help patients to reveal the unconscious and repressed libidinal and sexual drives provoked by the analysts’ neutral responses.
Kohut thought that this mechanical approach was appropriate to explain the structural neurosis that Freud most frequently encountered. However, he found that it could not provide a full account of other disorders. Kohut claimed that psychoanalysts should employ a new scientific methodology that was germane to addressing the experience of the self and psychological phenomena beyond structural neurosis. In his opinion, this approach is an “introspective-empathetic observation and theoretical conceptualization of the participating self.”8 Consequently, he explained that the psychology of the self is “a psychology of complex mental states which, with the aid of the persevering empathetic-introspective immersion of the observer into the inner life of man, gathers its data in order to explain them.”9
With the employment of a new methodology, Kohut began to realize that the development of the self and its progression occurs prior to that of drives. He believed that “the nucleus of the patient’s anxiety is related to the fact that his self is undergoing an ominous change—and the intensity of the drive is not the cause of the central pathology, but its result.”10 When the self is weakened or fragmented as a result of the empathic failures of its selfobject, it “turns defensively toward pleasure aims through stimulation of erogenic zones, and then, secondarily, brings about the oral (and anal) drive orientation and the ego’s enslavement to the drive aims correlated to the stimulated body zones.”11 Therefore, his central issue in the theory and practice of self psychology was placed in the cohesion of the self. For him, libidinal drives are not a “psychological bedrock,” as in the Freudian drive theory, but rather an outcome of a fragmented self.12
Kohut also examined the Oedipal complex within the framework of the psychology of the self. In his view, a healthy Oedipal stage should be differentiated from a pathological Oedipus complex. The former can be described as a joyfully experienced phase of self-development in which the child’s “primary affectionateness and assertiveness of the Oedipal-phase self” are responded to with parents’ fondness and pride. 13 On the other hand, the Oedipus complex indicates a pathological distortion of proud and joyful qualities because the parents consider the normal expression of affection and assertiveness as “sexually stimulating and aggressively threatening.” 14 Therefore, according to Kohut, infantile sexuality and destructive aggression of the Oedipal stage can be seen as disintegration products, and “the presence of a fi rm self [as the] precondition for the experience of the Oedipal complex.” 15
Kohut devised two new words, “Guilty Man” and “Tragic Man,” to differentiate his deficit model from the Freudian conflict model.”16 The Guilty Man signifies a primarily Oedipal figure struggling with structural conflicts that resulted from a heightened tension between prohibited sexual and aggressive drives, and superego demands against such longings. The Tragic Man represents the person who carries the burden of depression caused by a psychological deficit and, thus, makes every effort to maintain cohesion of his fragmenting self. This difference becomes obvious in terms of how psychological development occurs. While Freud thought it is important for people to realistically gratify libidinal impulses within inevitable conflicts, to achieve development, Kohut asserted that one’s development is attained within the matrix of mutual empathy between the self and the selfobject. The stability and the cohesiveness of the self depend on self-experience with others. These ongoing needs for responsiveness throughout life are conceptualized as positive selfobject experiences that are one of the key terms in Kohut’s self psychology.
2
STRUCTURE OF THE SELF
Kohut’s theoretical and practical focus can be found in the cohesion of the self, an important indicator of the development of the self. It designates the state of the self, harmoniously constituted by all of its sectors. It is not easily fragmented and enfeebled by a series of hardships and frustrations in life and perceives the hidden dimension of the psyche, what Freud called “the unconscious.” Libidinal drives considered as the “psychological bedrock” for Freud were understood as disintegration products of a fragmented self.17 Further, the enfeebled self attempts to reassure itself by turning to its erogenous zone for stimulation, to reinforce that it is alive. A person who has a firm sense of self will incorporate these bodily desires into the structure of the self and, thus, maintain his/her psychological stability. The definition of the self in the preface to Kohut’s book, The Analysis of the Self, was still under the influence of Freudian images of human personality. According to Kohut, the conception of the self was understood as a content of the psychic apparatus and a structure of the mind because the self is “cathected with instinctual energy and it has continuity in time.”18 According to this perspective, there can be many selves, each of which has its own psychic locations within the mind, whose representations “are present not only in the id, the ego, and the superego, but also within a single agency of the mind.”19 However, Kohut’s concept of the self went
through the progression with respect to the relational nature of the self by which a nuclear self begins to develop.20 He described that the early self originates in the interaction between the caregiver and infant, which has the potential to facilitate the infant’s later development. In other words, the beginning point of self-development can be traced to the process by which a caregiver interacts with an infant.
The primary, rudimentary self may begin to develop at “the point in time when, within the matrix of mutual empathy between the infant and his self-object, the baby’s innate potentialities and the selfobject’s expectations with regard to the baby converge.”21 However, the nascent self remains weak, and its structure is unorganized. Its sense of cohesion and resilience depends on others’ empathetic attitudes through which the weak self establishes a firm structure of the self. The nascent self cannot separate others’ existence from its realities because the self experiences them as part of itself. Kohut referred to them as selfobjects, which include “persons whom the small child invests with narcissistic cathexes and thus experiences narcissistically.”22
Kohut pointed out that once a baby is born, at least in the Western culture, his/her parents think of the baby as already possessing a self. However, if the baby’s neurophysiological capacities do not sufficiently develop, he/she cannot be self-aware. Nevertheless, the baby is “from the beginning, fused via mutual empathy with an environment that does experience him [sic] as already possessing a self—an environment that not only anticipates the later separate self-awareness of the child, but already, by the very form and content of its expectations, begins to channel it into specific directions.”23 The development of the infant’s unique self, which has its own innate potentials, is facilitated by the relationship with an environment that exhibits an empathetic disposition. In other words, the creation of the self is closely associated with the matter of whether the primary caregiver responds empathically to the infant’s potentialities.
A core or nuclear self is formed by this relationship with the outside world, although it remains dependent on the empathic attitudes of its selfobjects. Kohut asserted that there are many selves in our minds and the nuclear self, which “is most centrally located in the psyche…is experienced as basic, and is most resistant to change.”24 He defined the nuclear self as follows:
This structure is the basis for our sense of being an independent center of initiative and perception, integrated with our most central ambitions and ideals and with our experience that our body and mind form a unit in space
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Was certaine goods to England he had sold, Which in the hands of creditors, but bad, Small hope to get, yet lesser meanes he had.
68.
Hither his wants him forciblie constrain’d, Though with long trauell both by land and seas, Led by this hope, that only now remain’d, Whereon his fortune finally he laies, And if he found that friendship heere were fain’d, Yet at the worst it better should him please, Farre out of sight, to perish heere vnknowne, Then vnrelieu’d be pitied of his owne.
69.
It chanc’d as I toward Westminster did ride, ’Mongst the great concourse passing to and fro, An aged man I happily espide, Whose outward looks much inward griefe did show, Which made me note him, and the more I ey’d Him, me thought more precisely I should know, Reuoluing long, it came into my mind, This was the man to me had been so kind:
70.
Was therewithall so ioyed with his sight, (With the deare sight of his so reuerend face) That I could scarcely keepe me from t’alight, And in mine armes him openly embrace:[2066] Weighing yet (well) what some imagine might, He being a stranger, and the publike place Checkt my affection, till some fitter hower On him my loue effectually might shower.
71.
“Neuer,” quoth I, “was fortune so vniust
As to do wrong vnto thy noble[2067] hart, What man so wicked could betray the trust Of one so vpright, of so good desart? And though obey necessitie thou must, As when the great’st[2068] the same to me thou art, Let me alone the last be left of all, That from the rest declin’d not with thy fall.”
72.
And calling to a gentleman of mine, Wise and discreet that well I knew to bee, Shew’d him that stranger, whose deiected eyne Fixt on the earth, nere once lookt vp at mee, “Bid yonder man come home to me and dine” Quoth I, “bespeake him reuerently, you see, Scorne not his habit, little canst thou tell How rich a mind in those meane rags doth dwell.”
73.
He with my name that kindly did him greete, Slowly cast vp his deadly-mouing eye, That long time had been fixed on his feete, To looke no higher then his miserie, Thinking him more calamitie did greete, Or that I had supposed him some spye, With a deepe sigh that from his heart he drew, Quoth he: “His will accomplisht be by you.”
74.
My man departed, and the message done, He whose sad heart with strange impressions strooke, To thinke vpon this accident begun, And on himselfe suspitiously to looke, Into all doubts he fearefully doth run,
Oft himselfe cheering, oft himselfe forsooke: Strangely perplext vnto[2069] my house doth come, Not knowing why iudg’d, nor dreading yet his doome.
75.
My seruants set his comming to attend, That were therein not common for their skill, Whose vsage yet the former did amend: He hop’d not good, nor guiltie was of ill, But as a man whose thoughts were at an end: “Fortune,” quoth he, “then worke on me thy will, Wiser then man, I thinke, he were that knew Whence this may come, or what thereof ensue.”
76.
His honored presence so did me enflame, That though[2070] being then in presence of my peeres, Daine not the lesse to[2071] meet him as he came, (That very hardly could containe my teares)
Kindly salute him, call him by his name, And oft together aske him how he cheares, With still along maintaining the extreame: Yet thought the man he[2072] had been in a dreame.
77.
At length t’awake[2073] him gently I began With this demaund, if once he did not know One Thomas Cromwell, a poore English man By him relieu’d, when he was driuen low: When I perceiu’d he my remembrance wan, Yet with his teares it silently did show: I wept for woe, to see mine host distrest, But he for ioy to see his happie guest.
78.
Him to the lords I publisht by my praise, And at my table carefully him set, Recounting them the many sundrie waies I was vnto this gentleman[2074] in debt, How great he was in Florence in those daies, With all that grace or reuerence him might get: Which all the while yet silently he heares, Moisting among his viands with his teares.
79.
And to lend fulnesse lastly to his fate, Great summes I gaue him, and what was his due Made knowne, my selfe became his aduocate, And at my charge his creditors I sue, Recouering him vnto his former state: Thus he the world began by me anew, That shall to all posteritie expresse His honored bountie, and my thankfulnesse.
80.
But muse recount, before thou further passe, How this great change so quickly came about, And what the cause of this sad downefall was, In euery part the spatious realme throughout, Being effected in so little space, Leaue not thereof posteritie to doubt, That with[2075] the world obscured else may bee, If in this place reuealed not by thee.
81.
If the whole land did on the church relie, Hauing full power kings to account to call, That to the world read only policie,
Besides heauen’s keyes to stop or let in all, Let me but know from her supremacie How she should come so suddenly to fall: ’Twas more then chance sure put a hand thereto, That had the power so great a thing to do.
82.
Or ought there were had biding vnder sunne, Who would haue thought those edifices great, Which first religion holily begunne, The church approu’d, and wisdome richly seate, Deuotion nourish’d, faith allowance wonne, And all that them might any[2076] way compleate, Should in their ruines lastly buried lie, But that begun and ended from the skie?
83.
And the king late obedient to her lawes, Against the clerke of Germany had writ, As he that first stirr’d in the churche’s cause, Against him greatliest that oppugned it, And wan from her so gratefull an applause, Then in her fauour chiefly that did sit, That as the prop, whereon she only stai’th, Him she instil’d Defender of the faith.
84.
But not their power, whose wisdomes them did place In the first ranke, the oracles of state, Who that opinion strongly did embrace, Which through the land receiued was of late, Then ought at all preuailed in this case, O powerfull doome of vnauoided fate, Whose depth not weake mortalitie can know, Who can vphold what heauen will ouerthrow?
85.
When time now vniuersally did show The power to her peculiarly annex’d, With most abundance then when she did flow, Yet euery hower still prosp’rously she wex’d, But the world poore did by loose riots grow, Which serued as an excellent pretext, And colour gaue to plucke her from her pride, Whose only greatnesse suffred none beside.
86.
Likewise to that posteritie did doubt, Those at the first not rightly did[2077] adore, Their fathers that too credulous deuout Vnto the church[2078] contributed their store, And to recouer only went about What their great zeale had lauished before, On her a strong hand violently lai’d, Preying on that they gaue for to be prai’d.
87.
And now the[2079] king set in a course so right, Which I for him laboriously had tract, (Who, till I learn’d him, did not know[2080] his might) I still to prompt his power with me to act, Into those secrets got so deepe a sight, That nothing lastly to his furtherance lackt, And by example plainly to him showne, How all might now be easly ouerthrowne.[2081]
88.
In taking downe yet of this goodly frame He suddenly not brake off euery band,
But tooke the power first from the papall name, After, a while let the religion stand, When limbe by limbe he daily did it lame, First tooke a leg, and after tooke a hand, Till the poore semblance of a bodie left, But all should stay it, vtterly bereft.
89.
For if some abbey hapned void to fall By death of him that the superiour was, Gaine, that did first church libertie enthrall, Only supreame, promoted to the place, ’Mongst many bad, the worst most times of all, Vnder the colour of some other’s grace, That by the slander, from his life should[2082] spring, Into contempt it more and more might bring.
90.
This time from heauen when by the secret course, Dissension vniuersally began, (Preuailing as a planetarie sourse) I’th’church belieuing, as Mahumitan, When Luther first did those[2083] opinions nurse, Much from great Rome in little space that wan, It to this change so aptly did dispose, From whose sad ruine ours so great arose.
91.
That heere that fabrique vtterly did faile, Which powerfull fate had limited to time, By whose strong law it naturally must quaile, From that proud height to which it long did clime, Letting ’gainst it the contrarie preuaile, Therein to punish some notorious crime, For which at length iust dooming heauen decreed,
That on her buildings ruine heere should feed.
92.
Th’authoritie vpon her she did take, And vse thereof in euery little thing, Finding her selfe how oft she did forsake, In her owne bounds her neuer limiting,[2084] That awfull feare and due obedience brake Which her reputed holinesse did bring, From slight regard soone brought her into hate With those that much disliked her[2085] estate.
93.
And that those[2086] parts she cunningly had plai’d, Beliefe vnto her[2087] miracles to win, Vnto the world[2088] were euery day bewrai’d, From which the doubt did of her power begin, Damnation yet to question what she said, Made most suspect the faith they had been in, When their saluation easly might be bought, Found not this yet the way that they had sought.
94.
When those ill humours ripened to a head, Bred by the ranknesse of the plentious land, And they not only strangely from her fled, Bound for her ancient libertie to stand, But what their fathers gaue her being dead, The sonnes rap’d from her with a violent hand, And those her buildings most of all abus’d, That with the waight their father’s coffins bruis’d.
95.
The wisest and most prouident but build, For time againe too wastfully destroy,[2089] The costly piles and monuments we guild, Succeeding time shall reckon but a toy, Vicissitude impartially wil’d, The goodliest things be subiect to annoy, And what one age did studiously maintaine, The next againe accounteth vile and vaine.
96.
Yet time doth tell, in some things they did erre, That put their helpe her brauery to deface, When as the wealth, that taken was from her, Others soone raised, that did them displace, Their titles and their offices conferre On such before, as were obscure and base, Who would with her they likewise downe should go, And o’rthrew them that her did ouerthrow.
97.
And th’Romish rites, that with a cleerer sight The wisest thought they iustly did reiect, They after saw that the receiued light, Not altogether free was from defect, Mysterious things being not conceiued right, Thereof bred in the ignorant neglect, For in opinion something short doth fall, Wants there haue been, and shall be still in all.
98.
But negligent securitie and ease
Vnbridled sensualitie begat, That only sought his appetite to please, As in the midst it of abundance[2090] sat, The church not willing others should her praise
That she was leane, when as her lands were fat, Her selfe to too much libertie did giue, Which some perceiu’d that in those times did liue.
99.
Pierce the wise plowman, in his vision saw Conscience sore hurt, yet sorer was affraid The seuen great sins to hell him like to draw, And to wise clergie mainly cri’d for aid: Falne ere he wist, whom perill much did awe, On vncleane priests whil’st faintly he him staid, Willing good clergie t’ease his wretched case, Whom these strong giants hotly had in chase.
100.
Clergie call’d friers, which neere at hand did dwell, And them requests to take in hand the cure, But for their leechcraft that they could not well, He listed not their dressing to endure, When in his eare need softly him did tell (And of his knowledge more did him assure) They came for gain, their end which they did make, For which on them the charge of soules they take.
101.
And voluntarie pouertie profest, By food of angels seeming as to liue: But yet with them th’accounted were the best That most to their fraternitie doe giue, And beyond number that they were increas’d: “If so,” quoth Conscience, “thee may I beleeue, Then t’is in vaine more on them to bestow, If beyond number like they be to grow.”
102.
The frier soone feeling Conscience had him found, And hearing how hypocrisie did thriue, That many teachers euery where did wound, For which Contriton miserably did grieue: Now in deceit to shew himselfe profound, His former hopes yet lastly so reuiue Gets the pope’s letters, whereof he doth shape Him a disguise from conscience to escape.
103.
And so towards goodly vnitie he goes, A strong-built castle standing very hie, Where Conscience liu’d to keepe him from his foes, Whom, lest some watchfull centinell should spie, And him vnto the[2091] garrison disclose, His cowle about him carefully doth tie, Creepes to the gate, and closely thereat beate, As one that entrance gladly would intreate.
104.
Peace, the good porter, readie still at hand, It doth vnpin, and praies him God to saue, And after saluing, kindly, doth demand What was his will, or who he there would haue? The frier low lowting, crossing with his hand, “T’speak with Contrition (quoth he) I would craue.”
“Father (quoth peace) your comming is in vaine, For him of late hypocrisie hath slaine.”
105.
“God shield:” (quoth he) and turning vp the eyes, “To former health I hope him to restore, For in my skill his sound recouerie lies, Doubt not thereof if setting God before:”
“Are you a surgeon?” Peace againe replies:
“Yea (quoth the frier) and sent to heale his sore:” “Come neere (quoth Peace) and God your comming speed, Neuer of help contrition hath more need.”
106.
And for more haste he haleth in the frier, And his lord conscience quickly of him told, Who entertain’d him with right friendly cheere: “O sir (quoth he) intreate you that I could To lend your hand vnto my cosin deare[2092] Contrition, whom a sore disease doth hold, That wounded by hypocrisie of late, Now lieth in most desperate estate.”
107.
“Sir (quoth the frier) I hope him soone to cure, Which to your comfort quickly you shall see, Will he a while my dressing but endure?” And to Contrition therewith commeth hee, And by faire speech himselfe of him assure, But first of all going thorough for his fee: Which done, quoth he: “If outwardly you show Sound, ’tnot auailes if inwardly or no.”
108.
But secretly assoiling of his sin, No other med’cine will vnto him lay, Saying, that heauen his siluer him should win, And to giue friers was better then to pray, So he were shrieu’d what need he care a pin? Thus with his patient he so long did play, Vntill Contrition had forgot to weepe: This the wise plowman shew’d me from his sleepe.
109.
He saw their faults, that loosly liued then, Others againe our weaknesses shall see: For this is sure, he bideth not with men That shall know all to be what they should bee: Yet let the faithfull and industrious pen Haue the due merit: but returne to mee, Whose fall this while blind fortune did deuise, To be as strange as strangely I did rise.
110.
Those secret foes yet subt’ly to deceiue, That me maligning lifted at my state, The king to marry forward still I heaue, (His former wife being repudiate)
To Anne, the sister of the duke of Cleaue, The German princes to confederate, To backe me still ’gainst those against me lay, Which as their owne retain’d me here in pay.
111.
Which my destruction principally wrought, When afterward, abandoning her bed, Which to his will to passe could not be brought, So long as yet I beare about my head, The only man her safetie that had sought, Of her againe and only fauoured, Which was the cause he hasted to my end, Vpon whose fall her’s likewise did depend.
112.
For in his high distemp’rature of blood Who was so great, whose life he did regard? Or what was it that his desires withstood
He not inuested, were it nere so hard? Nor held he me so absolutely good, That though I crost him, yet I should be[2093] spar’d, But with those things I lastly was to go, Which he to ground did violently throw.
113.
When Winchester, with all those enemies, Whom my much power from audience had debarr’d, The longer time their mischiefes to deuise, Feeling with me how lastly now it far’d, When I had done the king that[2094] did suffice, Lastly, thrust in against me to be heard, When all[2095] was ill contrarily turn’d good, Making amaine to th’shedding of my blood.
114.
And that the king his action doth deny, And on my guilt doth altogether lay, Hauing his riot satisfied thereby, Seemes not to know how I therein did sway, What late was truth conuerted heresie:[2096] When he in me had purchased his pray, Himselfe to cleere and satisfie the sin, Leaues me but late his instrument therein.
115.
Those lawes I made, my selfe alone to please, To giue me power more freely to my will, Euen to my equals hurtfull sundrie waies, (Forced to things that most do say were ill) Vpon me now as violently ceaze, By which I lastly perisht by my skill, On mine owne necke returning (as my due)
That heauie yoke wherein by me they drew
116.
My greatnesse threatned by ill-boding eyes, My actions strangely censured of all, Yet in my way my giddines not sees The pit, wherein I likely was to fall: O were the sweets of man’s felicities
Often amongst not temp’red with some gall, He would forget by his ore weening skill, Iust heauen aboue doth censure good and ill.
117.
Things ouer rancke do neuer kindly beare, As in the corne, the fluxure when we see Fills but the straw, when it should feed the eare, Rotting that time in ripening it should bee, And being once downe it selfe can neuer reare: With vs well doth this similie agree, (By the wise man) due to the great in all, By their owne weight being broken in their fall.
118.
Selfe-louing man what sooner doth abuse, And more then his prosperitie doth wound? Into the deepe but fall how can he chuse That ouer-strides whereon his foot to ground? Who sparingly prosperitie doth vse, And to himselfe doth after-ill propound, Vnto his height who happily doth clime, Sits aboue fortune, and controlleth time.
119.
Not chusing that vs most delight doth bring,
And most that by the generall breath is freed, Wooing that suffrage, but the vertuous thing, Which in it selfe is excellent indeed, Of which the depth and perfect managing Amongst the most, but few there be that heed, Affecting that agreeing with their blood, Seldome enduring, neuer yet was good.[2097] 120.
But whil’st we striue too suddenly to rise By flattring princes with a seruill tong, And being soothers to their tyrannies, Worke out more[2098] woes by what doth many wrong, And vnto others tending iniuries, Vnto our selues it hapneth oft among, In our own snares vnluckily are caught, Whil’st our attempts fall instantly to naught. 121.
The counsell chamber place of my arrest, Where chiefe I was, when greatest was the store, And had my speeches noted of the best, That did them as hie oracles adore: “A parliament was lastly my enquest, That was my selfe a parliament before, The Tower-hill scaffold last I did ascend:” Thus the great’st man of England made his end.”
Michael Drayton.
FINIS.
END OF PART III.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] To the. ed. 1559, 63.
[2] Many other of 1559, 63
[3] Heedy. 1559, 63.
[4] That there 1559, 63
[5] Officers. 1559, 63. Magistrates. 1575.
[6] Other places to shift of, and put by those that with flattery 1559, 63
[7] Offices. 1559, 63.
[8] To prank vp themselues 1559, 63
[9] Duties, and they wil geue more. 1559, 63.
[10] To bye them. 1559, 63.
[11] Seke only their commodity and ease. 1559, 63.
[12] Officers. 1559, 63.
[13] Officers. 1559, 63.
[14] When noughtye men had the regiment. 1559, 63.
[21] A Mirrour for Magistrates can shewe, which therefore I humbly 1559, 63, 75
[22] As in a loking glass. 1559. 63.
[23] Vice be in you 1559, 63
[24] Moue to the. 1559, 63.
[25] Chiefest ende whye it is. 1559, 63.
[26] God graunt it may attaine 1559, 63, 75
[27] But hyndred by the lorde chauncellor that then was. 1563. Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, made chancellor, 21 Sept 1553, died Nov 1555, and was succeeded as chancellor, by Heath, archbishop of York, Wednesday, 1st January, 1555
[28] Of my lord Stafford. 1563.
[29] Although I haue bene called to another trade of lyfe, yet my good lorde Stafford 1563
[30] Another parte, conteynyng as lytle of myne owne, as the fyrst part doth of other men’s. Which, &c. 1563.
[31] The wurke was begun, and part of it printed IIII years agoe, but hyndred by the lord chauncellour that then was, nevertheles, through the meanes of my lord Stafford, lately perused and licensed. Whan I first tooke it in hand, I had the help of many graunted and offred of sum, but of few perfourmed, skarce of any. So that when I entended to haue continued it to quene Marie’s time, I haue ben faine to end it much sooner: yet so, that it may stande for a patarne till the rest be ready: which, with God’s grace, (if I may have anye helpe) shall be shortly. In &c. 1559.
[32] Myrrour 1559, 63
[33] Enuyed and murdered. 1559, 63.
[34] Punish sinne boldly, bothe, &c 1559 Suppres sinne, 1563.
[35] Lieutenauntes. 1559.
[36] Covet. 1559, 63.
[37] From edition, 1578.
[38] Lidgate’s booke of the fall. 1559, 63, 71.
[39] Hauinge made priuy thereto 1578
[40] Had abused here. 1578.
[41] For al men as well nobles as others to shewe 1559, 63, 71
[42] To enterprise, I refused vtterly alone to vndertake it, without the helpe. 1578.
[43] Able to wield and discharge the weight of sutch a burden, thinkinge. 1578.
[44] Diligent in hys affayres, procure me an Athlas to laye the burden vppon my shoulders which I would not haue undertaken, but that shortly after 1578
[45] In the first edition there only appears the productions of Cavil, Churchyard, Ferrers, Phaer, Skelton and Baldwin.
[46] An 1559, 63, 71, 75, 78
[47] Wee did not mislyke. 1578.
[48] Cumlily 1559; cumly 1563
[49] I maruayle, quod hee, what. 1578.
[50] Our nation, 1559, 63, 71, 78
[51] Some also in the time of Bochas himselfe. 1578.
[52] Added in ed 1571
[53] Eyther by malice or misaduenture slaine in the new forest, as he was in hunting there, by. 1575. Eyther by malice or misaduenture slayne hunting in the new forest by. 1578.
[54] England, by Henry, &c. 1578.
[55] And after, myserably. 1578.
[56] Likewise, not in 1578.
[57] Henry the first, called Beauclerke, drowned vpon the sea by the negligence of drunken mariners 1578
[58] The passage in brackets added in ed. 1571.
[59] Prosperity The most vnnaturall murther of Artur, duke of Britayne, right heyre of Englande, by king Ihon his vncle, with the death of Isabell, his sister, by famyne The myserable ende of the sayd king Ihon their vncle, by surfet, or as some write, poysoned by a monke of the abby of Swinsted in Lyncolneshyre, are, &c 1578
[60] Wanted our countrey cronicles. 1559, 63.
[61] And a notable 1559, 63
[62] Supply. 1578.
[63] As blinde bayard is alway boldest. 1559, 63.
[64] Reigne 1578
[65] A time as troublesome to the people as vnlucky to the prince 1578.
[66] Lewd meiney. 1576.
[67] And. 1559, 63.
[68] Although he be no great prynce: yet, &c. 1559, 63.
[69] And of other his fellowes learned in the law that were plagued with him: thereby to warne all of theyr callinge and profession, to beware of wrong judgementes 1578
[70] This preface is reprinted by Warton, as he says it cannot easily be found. History of English Poetry, Vol. III. p. 217.
[71] In the present edition the original arrangement is preserved
[72] Anno 1388, added 1571.
[73] Sad N
[74] When as we. N.
[75] The lande 1578
[76] Vncorrupt and vpright, 1559, 63.
[77] Prynt it for a president 1559, 63
[78] Where judges. 1578.
[79] What fee is for falshoode 1559, 63
[80] Princes will. N.
[81] Who for filthy lucre, corrupt 1578
[82] Gainst justice wretchedly. N.
[83]
A chaunge more newe or straunge seldome hath be seen, Then from the benche above to cum downe to the bar; Was never state so turned in no time as I ween, As they to become clyents that counsaylours erst were: But such is fortune’s play, which featly can prefer The judge that sat above, full lowe beneth to stand,
