Metaxy, Forms, and Healing: A Neoplatonic-Augustinian Approach to the Integration of Catholicism and Depth Psychology

Abstract

In the last decade, the Catholic Church increasingly has been open to psychology, yet depth psychology still is foreign to it and often not accepted. Likewise, few depth psychologists are open to Catholicism. This article attempts to rectify this situation in an investigation of the integration between the two. It does so by drawing on the philosophical assumptions from the Neoplatonic-Augustinian tradition. I define depth psychology as the examination of a realm, lying behind, around, or within the surface of one's life, consisting of patterns, figures, and landscapes affecting one's thoughts, emotions, bodily reactions, and behaviors, but of which one is unaware, relating to the universal, enduring figures in classic literature. I discuss the relationship of universal figures and landscapes to the “intermediate” region between spirit and matter, metaxy, through following Diotima in Plato's Symposium and some of Simone Weil's work. I relate metaxy to both Forms and the material, human world as communication, a circuit. I discuss where I depart from the Platonic sense of emanation and descent with exclusive derivation upon Forms. I illustrate this concept with St. Augustine's conversion. I further explore the “betweenness” of metaxy with the works of prominent Catholics, St. Pope John Paul II, Pope Emeritus Benedict, and Josef Pieper.