A Case of Psychoanalytic Self-Observation*

The person of whom I am reporting is no patient of mine; I do not even know her personally since she has been dead for over 350 years. She was St. Teresa of Jesus, one of the most extraordinary women of history. In order to have a better understanding of the mental development of the Spanish woman who lived from 1515 to 1582, one must know the Spanish history of her time.

In 1492, the reconquest of the Pyrenean peninsula had been finished, when Granada, the last bulwark of the Moors, fell into the hands of the Christians. In the same year the Jews had been driven out of Spain. In 1517, the Reformation began in Germany and its influences were also being realized in Spain. In 1534, the Societas Jesu, the Company of the Jesuits was founded by a Spaniard and Spanish prelates played an important part at the Council of Trent. The counter-reformation was carried through in Spain with all the gloomy fanaticism we are used to ascribe to its people. The Netherlands were ravaged and depopulated in honor of the old faith. Far abroad, courageous and ruthless conquerors brought the Catholic religion to the natives of the New World. At the same time, there were other signs of a deepening religious feeling in all circles of the Spanish people, a tendency to revert from worldly pleasures to asceticism and mysticism.

It is easy to understand that sensitive and excitable young souls were particularly powerfully aroused by the atmosphere of religious enthusiasm. Thus the seven-years-old girl Teresa de Cepeda, a descendant of a noble old family of Castile, made up her mind to become a martyr, left her home together with her brother to wander into the country of the Moors and if necessary be sacrificed in honor of God. Fortunately they were caught in time by a relative and brought home. The whole course of her development cannot be recounted briefly, therefore I shall only sketch her life with a few general remarks.