A Psychoanalytic Approach to the Mystical Experience: Fantasy and Separation in the Book of Margery Kempe
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This paper examines the subversiveness of medieval female mystic’smystical experience inscribed in The Book of Margery Kempe, focused onMargery’s earlier mystical experiences in the light of Lacan’s psychoanalysistheory: Separation, and also observes the complex relationship between orthodoxreligious ideology and mysticism. Based on Lacanian Separation, this study reads how Margery became amystic and the early phase of her mystical life from the viewpoint of her desire,which was not satisfied in the sensible world. In her early mystical life, Margerysubordinated to religious ideology and misunderstood that the mysticalexperience and the absolute divine belonged to the Church. Margery, who wasa divided subject, faced her lack through the rejection of confession. Themystical experiences in her early mystic life can be read as her relationship withChrist as an object of desire, which Lacan terms ‘Fantasy.’ During her earlierexperiences as a mystic, Margery tried to be approved herself by the discourseof religious ideology. However, as she continued to experience Christ, excludingthe established religious spheres, she separated her mystical experiences and herobject of desire from the symbolic order, and recognized the lack of theOther(religious ideology). Thus she wished to satisfy her desire by the unionwith divinity outside the symbolic order. In other words, she realized that thedivine is absent from religious circles and acknowledged her own the spiritualauthority. This process is well explained through the process of LacanianSeparation in which the divided subject in the symbolic realizes the lack of theOther through the Fantasy relationship.
Abstract
This paper examines the subversiveness of medieval female mystic’smystical experience inscribed in The Book of Margery Kempe, focused onMargery’s earlier mystical experiences in the light of Lacan’s psychoanalysistheory: Separation, and also observes the complex relationship between orthodoxreligious ideology and mysticism. Based on Lacanian Separation, this study reads how Margery became amystic and the early phase of her mystical life from the viewpoint of her desire,which was not satisfied in the sensible world. In her early mystical life, Margerysubordinated to religious ideology and misunderstood that the mysticalexperience and the absolute divine belonged to the Church. Margery, who wasa divided subject, faced her lack through the rejection of confession. Themystical experiences in her early mystic life can be read as her relationship withChrist as an object of desire, which Lacan terms ‘Fantasy.’ During her earlierexperiences as a mystic, Margery tried to be approved herself by the discourseof religious ideology. However, as she continued to experience Christ, excludingthe established religious spheres, she separated her mystical experiences and herobject of desire from the symbolic order, and recognized the lack of theOther(religious ideology). Thus she wished to satisfy her desire by the unionwith divinity outside the symbolic order. In other words, she realized that thedivine is absent from religious circles and acknowledged her own the spiritualauthority. This process is well explained through the process of LacanianSeparation in which the divided subject in the symbolic realizes the lack of theOther through the Fantasy relationship.
참고문헌 (13)
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