TERESA-OF-AVILA - THE WILL AND THE WEAVING

For more than forty-five years as a Carmelite nun in the sixteenth cen tury, Teresa of Avila suffered from great physical pain. We see in her life how disciplined prayer can become a healing experience that move s from minimal psychic representation to full symbolic representation. After a brief examination of Teresa's life, two theoretical perspecti ves on somatic manifestation will be reviewed: the theory of conversio n hysteria of the classical Freudian school, and the differentiation J oyce McDougall draws between hysterical and psychosomatic phenomena. F or the psychosomatic, as the mystic, the void of wordless space has si gnificance. Following after McDougall on the suffering body, a third p erspective will be offered: the concept of conscious body suffering as a means to inner change.