Abstract
In this paper, the concept of acedia is reexamined as a diagnostic term that may be helpful in understanding persons who recognize a good, yet who have no motivation or desire for the good. A brief depiction of past and more recent theological and philosophical accounts of acedia serves as a foundation for identifying various characteristics of acedia and for differentiating acedia from depression. This leads to a psychoanalytic revision of acedia. I first describe the relational dynamics and sources (developmental and cultural) of acedia using a threefold dialectic: recognition–negation, surrender–generation, and disruption–repair. The aim of this description is to explain how desire and interest are dissociated from the object, draining the subject of motivation, though leaving intact the capacities for recognition and valuation. I suggest, further, that acedia signifies a person’s defense against loss as well as her attempt to retain meaning that is not meaningful. I conclude with several comments on how this perspective can shape how one thinks about working with a person who manifests acedia in some aspect of her life.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
While there are different connotations for sloth and acedia, in this paper whenever I use the term sloth it will be understood as possessing the same root meaning of acedia—not caring.
This is an important distinction. In acedia a person may attribute significance to someone else and not attribute significance to her desires and needs. This does not mean that the person feels worthless. She simply has no interest and this lack of interest is not fueled by shame.
Freud (1925/1961) argued that negation was a logical operation associated with the capacity for symbolization. Spitz (1957, 1965), Ver Eecke (1984), and Litowitz (1998) have extended the notion of negation to a pre-symbolic rejection and refusal of another person or object, which precedes the semantic “no.” An infant’s initial “recognition” is accompanied by a somatic, presentational, pre-logical negation that is manifested in avoidance, retreat, expressions of physical disgust and aggression (Spitz 1965). Similarly, Lichtenberg et al. (1992) posited an aversive motivational system, which is present from birth, as the earliest form of negation.
This is negation as annihilation versus parental negation (child as not-me) that is relatively free of projection, creating a space for the child’s desires and emotions.
From another, more macro perspective, cultural stories and narratives can be lived out and used, wittingly or unwittingly, to subjugate, such that a person’s desires and needs are misrecognized. That is, cultural narratives may undergird recognition of only particular socially accepted assertions and desires, while omnipotently negating (annihilating) the attempted assertions of others. In this instance, negation becomes annihilation or denial, instead of a negation that includes the recognition and acceptance of the desires and needs of the other. In Gwen’s situation an argument can be made that patriarchal, cultural narratives were implicated in her parents’ and others’ misrecognitions of her desires.
The idea of surrender has been discussed in various ways in the psychoanalytic literature. Angyal (1965/1982), for example, argued that there is a drive for autonomy (assertion) and a drive for homonony (surrendering to something greater). In his discussion about regression, Khan (1972) put forward the idea that malignant regressions “are basically reactive in nature. They are an attempt to avoid and evade something else that a patient dreads and is threatened by from within: namely surrender to resourceless dependence in the analytic situation” (Khan 1972, p. 225). “Surrender,” in this circumstance, means annihilation of the self, which Khan attributed to the patient and the analyst. In a similar vein, Ghent (1990) proposed that masochism involved a pseudo surrender—submission that had the appearance of surrender. Surrender, for Ghent, is not voluntary and is an experience of being “totally present,” which is connected to a sense of aliveness and “the discovery of one’s identity, one’s sense of self, even one’s sense of unity with other living beings” (p. 111). Unlike surrender, though often confused with it, submission implies domination, compliance (Winnicott 1971, p. 28), the presence of a false self (Winnicott 1971, p. 34), the perversion of object use, lack of self-integration, and “losing oneself in the power of the other” (Ghent 1990, p. 115). Pointing to Winnicott, Ghent suggested that masochism reflects a “perversion of the wish for surrender” (1990, p. 119), which screens the person’s “longing to be reached and known, in an accepting and safe environment” (p. 118). Ghent, like Angyal and, implicitly, Winnicott, viewed surrender as necessary for the achievement of a true self and a sense of aliveness.
References
American Psychiatric Association (1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.
Angyal, A. (1982). Neurosis and treatment. New York: De Capo Press. (Original work published 1965).
Aquinas, T. (1966). Summa theologica (vol.33) (W. Hill, Trans.). New York: McGraw Hill. (Original work published 1265–1273).
Aquinas, T. (1968). Summa theologica (vol.9) (K. Foster, Trans.). New York: McGraw Hill. (Original work published 1265–1273).
Aron, L. (1996). A meeting of minds: Mutuality in psychoanalysis. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press.
Beebe, B., & Lachmann, F. (1994). Representation and internalization in infancy: Three principles of salience. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 11, 127–165.
Benjamin, J. (1988). The bonds of love. New York: Pantheon Books.
Benjamin, J. (1990). Recognition and destruction: An outline of intersubjectivity. In S. Mitchell & L. Aron (Eds.), Relational psychoanalysis (pp. 181–210). London: Analytic Press.
Benjamin, J. (1995). Like subjects, love objects. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Benjamin, J. (1998). The shadow of the other. London: Routledge Press.
Bollas, C. (1987). The shadow of the object. New York: Columbia University Press.
Borris, H. (1997). Envy in the psychoanalytic process. Journal of Melanie Klein and Object Relations, 15, 365–396.
Bringle, M. (1990). Despair: Sickness or sin. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press.
Bromberg, P. (1998). Standing in spaces: Essays on clinical process, trauma, and dissociation. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press.
Buber, M. (1958). I and thou. New York: Charles Scribner.
Cassian, J. (1997). The conferences (B. Ramsey Trans.). Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press.
Cassian, J. (2000). The institutes (B. Ramsey Trans.). Mahwah, NJ: The Newman Press.
Dunfee, S. (1982). The sin of hiding: A feminist critique of Reinhold Niebuhr’s account of the sin of pride. Soundings, 65, 316–327.
Evagrius, P. (2003). Eulogios (R. Sinkewicz Trans.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Fairlie, H. (1978). The seven deadly sins today. Washington, DC: New Republic Books.
Fonagy, P., Gergely, G., Jurist, E., & Target, M. (2002). Affect regulation, mentalization, and the development of the self. New York: Other Press.
Freud, S. (1961). Negation. In J. Strachey (Ed. & Trans.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 19, pp. 235–243). London: Hogarth Press. (Original work published 1925).
Gedo, J. (1995). On the psychology of motivation. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 15, 470–480.
Ghent, E. (1990). Masochism, submission, surrender. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 26, 108–136.
Green, A. (1999). The dead mother: The work of André Green. London: Routledge Press.
Heidegger, M. (1971). On the way to language. San Francisco: Harper Collins.
Himes, K. (2000). The formation of conscience: The sin of sloth and the significance of spirituality. In J. Keating (Ed.), Spirituality and moral theology (pp. 61–78). New York: Paulist Press.
Keizer, G. (2003, 14 June). Political sloth. Christian Century, 120, 8. (Full text online: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_12_120/ai_103996796).
Khan, M. (1972). Dread of surrender to resourceless dependence in the analytic situation. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 53, 225–230.
Lichtenberg, J., Lachmann, F., & Fosshage, J. (1992). Self and motivational systems. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press.
Litowitz, B. (1998). An expanded developmental line for negation: Rejection, refusal, denial. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 46(1), 121–148.
Lysons, K. (1986). The seven deadly sins: Sloth. Expository Times, 92(12), 371–372.
McFadyen, A. (2000). Bound to sin. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Menninger, K. (1973). Whatever became of sin? New York: Hawthorne Books.
Mitchell, S. (1993). Hope and dread in psychoanalysis. New York: Basic Books.
Ogden, T. (1999). Analyzing the forms of aliveness and deadness of the transference–countertransference. In G. Kohon (Ed.), The dead mother (pp. 128–148). London: Routledge Press.
Ortberg, J. (1994). The last taboo. Leadership, 15, 80–85.
Pinkard, T. (2000). Hegel: A biography. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Plaskow, J. (1980). Sex, sin, and grace: Women’s experience and the theologies of Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
Reuther, R. R. (1983). Sexism and God talk. Boston: Beacon Press.
Solomon, A. (2001). The noonday demon: An atlas of depression. New York: Scribner.
Spitz, R. (1957). No and yes: On the genesis of human communication. New York: International Universities Press.
Spitz, R. (1965). The first year of life: A psychoanalytic study of normal and deviant developmental object relations. New York: International Universities Press.
Stern, D. N. (1985). The interpersonal world of the infant. New York: Basic Books.
Suchocki, M. (1994). The fall to violence: Original sin in relational theology. New York: Continuum.
Tronick, E. (1989). Emotion and emotional communication in infants. American Psychologist, 44, 112–119.
Ver Eecke, W. (1984). Saying “no”. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.
Winnicott, D. (1955). Metapsychological and clinical aspects of regression within the psycho-analytical set-up. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 36, 16–26.
Winnicott, D. (1971). Playing and reality. London: Routledge Press.
Winnicott, D. (1990). Delinquency and deprivation. London: Routledge Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
LaMothe, R. An Analysis of Acedia. Pastoral Psychol 56, 15–30 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-007-0096-8
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-007-0096-8