Ulrike Wiethaus, Ecstatic Transformation: Transpersonal Psychology in the Work of Mechthild of Magdeburg. Syracuse University Press, 1996

Abstract

Ulrike Wiethaus' ambitious goal is to make medieval mysticism intellectually accessible to a modem western audience (2).To do this, she draws analogies between modem psychologies open to the existence and significance of "altered states of consciousness" and the accounts of ecstasies and visions within Mechthild of Magdeburg's The Flowing Light of the Godhead.The study is divided into two parts, the first focusing on ecstasy and the second on visions.After an introduction in which Wiethaus outlines her method and makes some preliminary claims about the context for Mechthild's book, Chapter 2 describes Mechthild's understanding of ecstasy, particularly as found in Book 1 of The Flowing Light.This is followed by two chapters describing contemporary psychological accounts of ecstasy, in particular the work of humanistic psychologists Abraham Maslow and Roberto Assagioli and the psychotherapeutic approaches of Arthur Deikman and Claudio Naranjo.Wiethaus suggests both the explanatory power of these models for understanding and making accessible Mechthild's work and subjects the contemporary psychologies to critique from the perspective of Mechthild's work.Chapter 5 again returns to Mechthild, describing the visions found in Book 2 of The Flowing Light.Wiethaus closes her book by arguing that contemporary psychophysiological approaches to visionary phenomena offer fruitfulalthough crucially limited-modes of access to medieval experience.This brief synopsis merely suggests the wide array of topics on which Wiethaus touches in her brief book.She clearly knows The Flowing Light well, and offers insightful readings of important aspects of the text.Any of a number of mystical texts would have served for Wiethaus' project, yet I find her most compelling when she focuses on the particularities of Mechthild's book.Although on first reading I was troubled by Wiethaus' assertion that "self-actualization" and "altered states of consciousness" could be taken as "approximate twentieth-century equivalents" for medieval conceptions of deificatio, visio, alienatio mentislfruitio/raptus, she is careful throughout her study to note both points of analogy and disanalogy, reiterating the divide between Mechthild's text and twentieth-century assumptions.Most crucially, Wiethaus keeps firmly in m