Response to Don Carveth’s Review of My Russian Icons Book

Dear Editor,

It is good to see that a review of my bilingual book The Joy of All Who Sorrow: Icons of the Mother of God in Russia (Moscow: Ladomir, 2005) has appeared in Clio’s Psyche (14/3, December 2007). In his review Donald L. Carveth devotes much attention to the topic of Freud’s atheism, and to the question of whether it is appropriate for a psychoanalytic scholar of icon-veneration to take an atheistic stance. I am indeed an atheist, but the topic of my book is not the validity of religious beliefs. It is, rather, the psychoanalytic significance of icons of the Mother of God (commonly referred to as the Blessed Virgin Mary in the West.) Russian Orthodox Christianity is the major religion in Russia, and the Mother of God is generally accepted as the most important deity there, even the “defender of Russia.” Many miracles have been and continue to be attributed to her icons. Psychoanalytically speaking, she is an omnipotent and idealized maternal object. There is just nothing like this phenomenon in the West.

Despite my atheism, I do not doubt that icons have a therapeutic value for Russian believers, as is clear in my chapter on “icon therapy.” Carveth misrepresents me when he states that I seem to be unaware of the “extensive literature” which demonstrates the role which religion plays in promoting psychological well-being. On the contrary, I write: “. . . the empirical studies indicate that religious believers live longer, happier, and healthier lives than do non-religious people. In the specific area of mental health, religious belief has been found to be beneficial, especially for those people who are ‘intrinsically’ religious, that is, who value religion for its own sake rather than as a means to an end. Conversely, those who are not religious have a greater probability of being in poor mental health” (p. 234).

It is thus possible for the psychoanalyst to recognize that veneration of icons in Russia involves regression, pre-Oedipal thinking, moral masochism, delusion, and other psychological phenomena without also having to deny the therapeutic value of such veneration. Icon therapy is real, and an atheist is in a position to study it without accepting the world

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view it entails. Also, my use of the term “masochism” seems particularly problematic to Carveth, but I do cite the recent psychoanalytic literature on this subject, and in any case my book The Slave Soul of Russia (New York University Press, 1995) establishes that moral masochism is utterly normal in the Russian cultural context.

Toward the end of his review Carveth makes a provocative comparison between psychoanalytic therapy and the sufferings of Jesus: “Can any symbolism hope to better capture the agony clinical psychoanalysts witness daily on our couches than that of the Stations of the Cross?” First, the Stations of the Cross constitute a devotion practiced by Roman Catholics, not Russian Orthodox believers. However, both Catholic and Orthodox theologians characterize the sufferings and death of Jesus on the cross as voluntary. In other words, Jesus is the paradigmatic moral masochist. The agony on the couch, by contrast, is intended to effect the cure (or at least the improvement), not the death of the analysand. And unlike Carveth, who believes the analysand needs to go through an “‘acceptance of castration’ (read crucifixion),” I believe the best one can hope for is a way to deal with castration anxiety, and all the other anxieties and problems which the analysand brings to the couch.

Sincerely Yours,

Daniel Rancour-Laferriere

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