The Mystic Mind

Drawing on a database of over 1400 medieval holy persons and in-depth studies of individual saints, this fascinating collaboration between a medieval historian and a professor of psychiatry applies modern biological and psychological research to the lives of medieval mystics and ascetics.

Jerome Kroll is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Minnesota Medical School. He is the author of The Challenge of the Borderline Patient (1988) and co-author, with Sir Martin Roth, of The Reality of Mental Illness (1986). Bernard Bachrach is Professor of History at the University of Minnesota. He has written or edited fifteen books and over one hundred articles on medieval history, including several studies on medieval mental illness in collaboration with Jerome Kroll.

Preface. Acknowledgments. Part I Psychology and Biology 1. Introduction 2. Heroic Asceticism and Self-Injurious Behavior 3. Mysticism and Altered States of Consciousness 4. Pain and Laceration of the Flesh 5. Sleep Deprivation 6. Fasting and Starvation Part II History. 7. Historical Methods: Selecting a Data Base 8. Pathways to Holiness 9. Radegund 10. Beatrice of Nazareth 11. Beatrice of Ornacieux 12. Henry Suso 13. Mental Illness, Hysteria, and Mysticism 14. Appendix: Statistical Analyses 15. Conclusion Notes. Bibliography.