If, in her Foundations, Teresa of Avila lingers over the subject of melancholia, it is because she recognizes it as incurable. Physicians, she says, cannot deal with it, and the mother superior of a convent, faced with such sufferers, has but one recourse: to inspire them with the dread of authority, to threaten them, to frighten them. The saint’s method remains the best: only kicks, slaps, and a good beating will be effective in the case of a “depressive.” Moreover, such treatment is precisely what the “depressive” himself resorts to when he decides to end it all: he merely employs more
...more
