7. A Psycho-analytic Study of the Voices of Joan of Arc*

The psycho-analytical enthusiast, who is not a practising physician, may turn to history for patients on whom to try his hand. But, whereas the practising analyst has the free associations of the living patient before him, the psycho-analytical historian must be content with dead records, which, by comparison, may seem hopelessly inadequate. Often they may be misleading, and sometimes positively false. Moreover, he cannot question them further, to confirm or to correct his views. At best, therefore, he can only hope to depict a personality which is psychologically coherent and consistent with the most plausible tradition. He cannot even guarantee that his portrait is the only one which satisfies these two conditions. But he may comfort himself with the reflection that, though his difficulties are greater than those of the practising physician, his responsibilities are less; and that his mistakes are unlikely to do harm.

The most reliable data for an analysis of Joan of Arc are to be found in her answers to the judges at her trial.1 But, since these alone are scarcely sufficient, they must be supplemented from the traditional representations of her character. These fall mainly into three groups. The first, which depicted her as a sorceress, has been revived in a modern form by Professor Margaret Murray, to whom Joan was the incarnate goddess of a pagan cult - a rustic survival from neolithic times. The second tradition depicts her as the epitome of all abstract chivalrous and Christian virtues. This view began during her life and received official sanction at the Trial of Rehabilitation. It still remains the chief inspiration of the more sentimental