ABSTRACT
In this paper I criticize attempts to reduce symbolic formations associated with penitential fasting in medieval Christianity to a pathological infrastructure. In this case, what has been termed “holy anorexia,” a manifestation among penitential nuns, has been conceptualized as a form of “anorexia nervosa.” My analytical strategy is based on the argument of my book Medusa’s Hair, which deals with the psychic travail of Sri Lankan Buddhist female ascetics and introduces the idea of “personal symbols,” those symbolic formations that operate on the level of culture and psyche at the same time. The back-and-forth movement from psyche to culture and culture to psyche is what I have termed “the work of culture.” The latter idea is based on Paul Ricoeur’s reformulation of the twin movements of Freudian theory, a regressive movement where a symptom is traced back to its archaic roots in childhood and a progressive movement entailing the notion of “sublimation” and forcefully argued in Ricoeur’s ground-breaking work, Freud and Philosophy. In my examination of penitential trance, rapture and visions, I deal with the work of culture whereby unconscious motivations (“deep motivations”) are progressively transformed or sublimated into publicly acceptable symbolic forms; or a parallel process whereby the cultural form is given personal motivational significance. Both processes coalesce around the notion of “personal symbol” and they permit intersubjective consensus or public validation of the symbolic formation as culture rather than as pathology.
