Mother Teresa's mental state

calebprime said:
When medical people talk about clinical depression, and when one reads a typical checklist, one sees things like:

-changes in sleeping: not sleeping or sleeping too much
-psychomotor agitation or retardation
-loss of interest in activities that used to give pleasure
-changes in appetite: not eating or eating too much
-changes in thought process: confusion, or indecision
-other changes: loss of libido.
-feelings of shame or worthlessness: low self-esteem
-some people describe the world as seeming flat, and losing the vividness of their senses
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Well, if you pick and choose from the "ors," it's like a checklist for contemplative saints:

sleeping too little--saint who prayed through the night, prayed at odd hours of the night
psychomotor retardation--makes you want to spend a lot of time "contemplating" instead of doing
loss of interest in activities that used to give pleasure--sublimating your desires to God; fasting
changes in thought process: confusion, or indecision--could lead to increased obedience
loss of libido--obviously
feelings of shame or worthlessness: low self-esteem--humility
some people describe the world as seeming flat, and losing the vividness of their senses--being "in" the world but not "of" the world; not being too attached to life

When I used to read the lives of saints, I was disturbed by the number who said something along the lines of "Oh, God, please take me to your breast, I am so weary of this world." An expression of faith and hope in God and the wonders of heaven? Maybe, but it sounded kind of suicidal to me.
 
juniper_ann said:
When I used to read the lives of saints, I was disturbed by the number who said something along the lines of "Oh, God, please take me to your breast, I am so weary of this world." An expression of faith and hope in God and the wonders of heaven? Maybe, but it sounded kind of suicidal to me.
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Just curious but; you used to read the lives of saints. Any particular reason for the interest?

Personally I think, there seem to be strong sexual undertones in Teresa's writings, as well as the reversions to infant age in the above. Suckling mother's (or daddy's) breasts and so on. Reminds me a lot of those poor sexually deprived people who are regularly kidnapped by aliens and then returned unharmed, except for memories of all kinds of, shall we say, probings.
 
Sexual undertones? I'm not saying there's nothing in it but that kinda "take me to your breast" stuff is just Catholic imagery. My grandmother sometimes uses the same sort of sentimental, touchy-feely language when talking about religion.
 
EeneyMinnieMoe said:
Sexual undertones? I'm not saying there's nothing in it but that kinda "take me to your breast" stuff is just Catholic imagery. My grandmother sometimes uses the same sort of sentimental, touchy-feely language when talking about religion.
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Well, I made the comment with the thought of M. Teresa's pleas in mind. Now there's some juicer stuff.

On the other hand, where does such "imagery" originate? No offense to Grandma. Old habits die hard.
 
Extreme depression it looks like to me. The aridness, lack of faith (even religious people will sometimes become atheistic when they're worn to a nub)
 
Elind said:
Oh. Didn't know catholics actually spent their time doing that. No offense meant.
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None taken. I was going more for shoulder-shrugging brevity than purse-lipped shortness.

Saints have God's stamp of approval--they're the ones who got it right. Since there's no recipe book of sainthood (because there's no single pathway), if you want to know how to do it right, one way is to read the lives of lots of saints and try to apply their methods to your life. Also, you can see what holiness looks like from the inside, because it never looks as serene as it does from the outside.

Not all Catholics read the lives of the saints. After all, as I said, there is no one approved pathway. I did partly because my aunt, a homeschooler using a Catholic curriculum, had a whole series that I borrowed from. However, they were intended for a junior high audience, so the for-adults versions were probably just that much more disturbing.
 
Elind said:
Oh. Didn't know catholics actually spent their time doing that. No offense meant.
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I certainly did. The lives of saints are very important, particularly the one you're named after and patron saints of countries, cities, ethnicities and professions. There's a name for the study of saints and it's "hagiography".

If you're interested in finding more about it, here's the FAQ from one of many resources online about the lives of saints, Catholic.org (yes, that's an actual domain name):

http://www.catholic.org/saints/faq.php
 
juniper_ann said:
I did partly because my aunt, a homeschooler using a Catholic curriculum, had a whole series that I borrowed from. However, they were intended for a junior high audience, so the for-adults versions were probably just that much more disturbing.
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It's funny you mention that. My bedtime stories about St.Agatha and Sunday school lessons were sanitized but my biographies of saints and other saints paraphernalia had the full adult, uncensored versions. The nudity, rape, forced masectomy, castration, penisectomy, abortion, premarital sex, torture and capital punishment, all of it.

I use to enjoy reading about the saints on my own for the violence and I've heard others raised Catholic say the same thing.
 
My understanding of saints is that the older ones are probably as much fiction as anything else in the bible after having been retold or written for hundreds of years. That amounts to reading church dogma as presented via stories.

Others I believe have been made saint based on the strangest of evidence, even when there was considerable other evidence that they were really nasty characters (forgive me, I can't remember names here). Presumably they were saved, but I also presume the nasty evil parts of thos lives was expunged from the record.

So, who do you believe when it comes to saints? Surely it is no more than a charade conducted by the church to further itself?

Watch this space for Teresa, of course.
 
I found the reports to be very sad.
Message to unbelief:

Complete lack of spiritual feeling or faith in God is no excuse for disobedience.
 
Kopji said:
I found the reports to be very sad.
Message to unbelief:

Complete lack of spiritual feeling or faith in God is no excuse for disobedience.
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As I said earlier, I felt sorry for her too. When someone is alive one can attack and force them to defend their position with reason, in theory at least.

However in this case I find myself thinking that she was such an obvious victim of church dogma that she probably can't be blamed for what she did, or did not do.

The Catholic church saw for 60 some years that this was a person to cultivate for their saint collection, and when it would have been obvious to a retarded atheist that she was suffering from depression they did not help her. Instead they encourage her illness to validate their sorry theology.

She was a victim of the Catholic church just as much as all the other people whose souls she saved and whose secular lives she dismissed.
 
Elind said:
The Catholic church saw for 60 some years that this was a person to cultivate for their saint collection, and when it would have been obvious to a retarded atheist that she was suffering from depression they did not help her. Instead they encourage her illness to validate their sorry theology.

She was a victim of the Catholic church just as much as all the other people whose souls she saved and whose secular lives she dismissed.
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I think it's turtles all the way down (or up, as it were). There is no cynical Vatican conspiracy to keep the hoi polloi in line. There's just not many secular reasons for someone to go into the upper echelons of the church these days--you have to take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience (and if you break them and get caught, you will be thrown out on your ear); the pay's lousy and you can't own anything (poverty); you don't have freedom of speech (obedience); you have the intrusion of the paparazzi (which means that if you break the rules, you will get caught) without the glamor or the model girlfriend (chastity); you have no temporal power. Everyone in the upper levels of the church is there because they believe, or want to believe, or used to believe but can't get out.
 
Let me tell you folks something.

I am often an unhappy person.

I generally don't like other people.

I have no religious faith.

I don't have tons of cash.

Given all of that, I have a hard time not wanting to buy a kid a candy bar at the store when the mother doesn't want them to have it. If I can't handle that, imagine how I would feel if I had millions of dollars and people suffering right in front of me.

Mother Teresa and her depression can go suck a tailpipe. I honestly feel like I've done more with my life than she has with hers. No matter how bad I have felt, I have always recognized that real physical suffering trumps any existential ennui I have ever experienced. Are we supposed to care that she was depressed?
 
So how does one know that kid at the candy store isn't a little controlling twerp that could grow up to be the Pope?

Compassion doesn't have to be justified, but both posts above have valid points.
 
JoeEllison said:
Let me tell you folks something.

I am often an unhappy person.

I generally don't like other people.

I have no religious faith.

I don't have tons of cash.

Given all of that, I have a hard time not wanting to buy a kid a candy bar at the store when the mother doesn't want them to have it. If I can't handle that, imagine how I would feel if I had millions of dollars and people suffering right in front of me.

Mother Teresa and her depression can go suck a tailpipe. I honestly feel like I've done more with my life than she has with hers. No matter how bad I have felt, I have always recognized that real physical suffering trumps any existential ennui I have ever experienced. Are we supposed to care that she was depressed?
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I wholeheartedly agree. I've had lots of personal problems. I've never abused AIDS patients and burn victims.

I don't care if she was or wasn't clinically depressed when she made a lot of other people feel so much worse.
 
:shrug: As Jesus said, she knew not what she did, or whatever, which is a feeble justification, but as I said I think there are others to blame who should have known better, right up to where the buck stops.
 
juniper_ann said:
I think it's turtles all the way down (or up, as it were). There is no cynical Vatican conspiracy to keep the hoi polloi in line. There's just not many secular reasons for someone to go into the upper echelons of the church these days--you have to take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience (and if you break them and get caught, you will be thrown out on your ear); the pay's lousy and you can't own anything (poverty); you don't have freedom of speech (obedience); you have the intrusion of the paparazzi (which means that if you break the rules, you will get caught) without the glamor or the model girlfriend (chastity); you have no temporal power. Everyone in the upper levels of the church is there because they believe, or want to believe, or used to believe but can't get out.
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Well said, and persuasive.

I bolded the part I'm wondering about.

Maybe there are feelings of power, if not real power:

-The respect of parishioners.
-Access to people's psyches through formal or informal confession.

-The feeling of being part of a hierarchy and a vast, ancient institution.

-In asceticism, the victory of one's will over one's ordinary desires.

-The feeling, therefore, of cultivating oneself, in whatever bizarre way cultivation might be defined.

-Superiority over the hideous, noisy, pointless secular world.

-Aesthetic pleasures only possible when sheltered from the hustle, bustle, turmoil, pell-mell.

As you can tell, I'd like to be part of some secular, individualist monastery: shelter from the storm. But there ain't no such thing. Maybe sanitariums?
 
Elind said:
Personally I think, there seem to be strong sexual undertones in Teresa's writings, as well as the reversions to infant age in the above. Suckling mother's (or daddy's) breasts and so on. Reminds me a lot of those poor sexually deprived people who are regularly kidnapped by aliens and then returned unharmed, except for memories of all kinds of, shall we say, probings.
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heh... I think that's reading too much into it. You'd have a field day with "Dark Night of the Soul" by St. John of the Cross, wouldn't you? :p

http://www.karmel.at/ics/john/dn.html
 
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