For a more recent relevant discussion, see Daniel B. Smith's book MUSES, MADMEN, AND PROPHETS: RETHINKING THE HISTORY, SCIENCE, AND MEANING OF AUDITORY HALLUCINATIONS (2007).
In any event, Virginia Woolf had multiple breakdowns over her lifetime and recovered from them and went on her way writing. We should remember and celebrate her resilience.
Now, Beatrice Bruteau (1930-2014; Ph.D. in philosophy, Fordham University, 1969) identified what she refers to as the paleo-feminine era in the human psyche and the new feminine era in the human psyche. Each is typically expressed as what she refers to as communion consciousness.
Concerning the paleo-feminine era in the human psyche, see M. Esther Harding's book WOMAN'S MYSTERIES: ANCIENT AND MODERN (1971) and Erich Neumann's books THE ORIGINS AND HISTORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS (1954) and THE GREAT MOTHER: AN ANALYSIS OF THE ARCHETYPE (1955).
Concerning the new feminine era in the human psyche, see Edward C. Whitmont's book RETURN OF THE GODDESS (1982).
The paleo-feminine era in the human psyche dominated in oral culture 1.0. It is characterized by what Ong refers to as the world-as-event sense of life.
Virginia Woolf's mature novels (in print culture 1.0) express communion consciousness, which characterizes oral culture 1.0 and oral culture 2.0 as it has emerged at least from the time of commercial radio in the 1920s onward in Western culture.
In the book THE DUALITY OF HUMAN EXISTENCE: AN ESSAY ON PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION (1966), David Bakan, a Jewish faculty member in psychology at the University of Chicago, identifies the duality of human existence as involving agency and communion. (But of course he was not the first to use those two terms.)
In her 700-page textbook THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GENDER, now in its fourth edition, Vicki S. Helgeson in psychology at Carnegie Mellon University summarizes her own research projects on agency and communion.
By definition, persons who develop both agency and communion optimally are psychologically androgynous persons.
In his 1995 book VIRGINIA WOOLF A TO Z, Hussey discusses psychological androgyny (pages 3-6).
In Virginia Woolf's elevated but non-psychotic manic moments, the communion dimension in her psyche was in the ascendency. Up to a certain point, the ascendancy of the communion dimension is not psychotic. But of course, it can become psychotic, as it did at times in Virginia Woolf's life. (By definition, being psychotic means losing contact with reality.)
Similarly, up to a certain point, one can experience a steep drop in the agency dimension but without descending into clinical depression. But of course it can descend into clinical depression. (By definition, clinical depression means losing contact with reality.)
In Virginia Woolf's experiences of clinical depression, the agency dimension in her psyche hit bottom, figuratively speaking.
Now, the Victorian Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote certain sonnets about his own non-clinical-depression. Literary critics have dubbed them the "terrible sonnets" -- not because they are terrible poetry (they are not terrible poetry), but because they articulate terrible depths of non-clinical-depression.
For a perceptive discussion of Hopkins, see Ong's book HOPKINS, THE SELF, AND GOD (1986), the published version of Ong's 1981 Alexander Lectures at the University of Toronto.
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