Medieval Antecedents Of The Therapeutic Alliance

The value of belief is at the core of religion and, also, of psychoanalysis. In both systems the ability to find belief in a force of creation allows for deeper awareness, sincere appreciation of life, and a hope for a journey to ultimate tranquility. The purpose of this article is to examine the therapeutic alliance as it existed in northern Europe in the 12th–15th centuries, and to draw parallels with the therapeutic rationales in psychoanalysis and dynamic therapy. Much has been written on trying to understand the daily life of average, middle-class people in the late Middle Ages, probably in an attempt to reform popular images of times so far removed and so controversial. We recreate the past in accordance with the values of our society. One example is the origin of the term “gothic,” created in the 18th century to denigrate the Opus Francigenum. The classical ideals of the Italian Renaissance did not allow for the less patterned creativity of the Opus Francigenum and referred to the art and architecture of that era as barbaric or gothiclike. Similarly, the term “Dark Ages” bursting into the light of the “Renaissance” would imply that on New Year's Day, 1500 A.D., everyone breathed a sigh of relief that now the world would be wonderful and unrepressed. In our own time, the Middle Ages conjure up for some the image of Camelot or Disneyland with beautiful princesses and gallant knights. Others, might imagine a horrendous stench as in The Name of the Rose or Monty Python and the Holy Grail with sweaty syphilitic monks dead in vats of pig's blood and everybody plotting to kill someone else. Children associate this era with games like Dungeons and Dragons or theme parks like Medieval Times, where life is a joust. Nor would it be profitable to debate whether the cruelty, arbitrary rightness, bigotry, fanaticism, and xenophobia of those days exceed or compare with today. The cultural legacy of any society is reflected in the most beneficial and creative achievements, w