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It is a historical narrative of supposed demonic possession, religious fanaticism, sexual repression, and mass hysteria that occurred in 17th-century France surrounding unexplained events that took place in the small town of Loudun. It centers on Roman Catholic priest Urbain Grandier and an entire convent of Ursuline nuns, who allegedly became ...
- Aldous Huxley
- 1952
The Devils of Loudun ends with a striking Appendix that goes deep into the psychology of mob hysteria, points made to explain why witch hunting was such a widespread panic back in the day. “No such scruples restrain the revolutionary leader, who hates the status quo and has only one wish – to create a chaos on which, when he comes to power, he may impose a new kind of order”.
- (3.2K)
- Paperback
- Devils and Exorcists
- Psychodynamic Interpretations
- Reclaiming 'Possession'
The language of possession has been fluid during the history of European religion, with the diagnostic criteria orthodox only to a particular time and place. In the early Middle Ages, the devil's field of action was the imagination, not the body: the devil was portrayed as a deceiver who employs fantasmata to lead the soul astray (one fell prey to ...
Freud never mentioned Loudun in his writings, but he did write a psychoanalytical interpretation of a case of exorcism in his essay 'A seventeenth-century demonological neurosis' (Freud, 1923/1985b). One can argue that Freud would have also identified 'demonologically neurotic' strategies in the possession at Loudun. The death of the father confess...
An etymological reading of possession locates an occupying entity exercising power over the sufferer as if tyrannically sitting in the sufferer's seat, claiming his or her chair. Freud's notion of demonological neurosis emphasised the idea of evasion, of possession as the ego's abdication of its seat: the individual employs a defensive strategy aga...
THE DEVILS OF LOUDUN June, 1954. religious life, but was endowed with an enormous amount of pride. Not wealthy enough to procure herself a husband, the convent offered. the only solution. Nevertheless, she found some consolation in her. appointment as superior of the Ursuline house at Loudun. Not.
The Devils is a white-walled nightmare of a film with a horrifying wipe-clean aesthetic. Yet it was the theological, political and sexual content that landed Russell in hot water. The film's ...
- Adam Scovell
Sep 13, 2024 · In the novel After Many a Summer Dies the Swan (1939), published soon after he moved to California, Huxley turned his attention to American culture. Huxley’s most important later works are The Devils of Loudun (1952), a detailed psychological study of a historical incident in which a group of 17th-century French nuns were allegedly the ...
Devils of Loudun to the UK (which may partly explain why it was sung in English rather than the original German or Danish) although noth-ing has been officially announced as far as I am aware. No such plans have so far been posited for either Detlev Glanerťs Solaris (2012) or Mikko Heiniö's Eerik XIV (2011). Solaris -
