Lesbian nuns: breaking silence

Esto no puede pillarle a nadie de sorpresa

Publicado el 05/05/2009 por RinzeWind

Un montón de personas adultas que se encierran en un edificio a vestir ropas raras y a hablarle en voz alta al protagonista de su libro de ficción favorito. Lo anterior tiene claros visos de ser una enfermedad mental, o al menos acercársele bastante. En 1961, un grupo de monjes benedictinos se sometió a psicoanálisis. Dos tercios de la congregación decidió que, en el fondo, aquello no era para ellos:

[Bovet] suggests that many clergy would benefit from psychotherapy during their training. This was attempted in Mexico when in 1961 a group of 60 Benedictine monks underwent group and individual psychoanalysis. However, of the original 60 monks taking part in this experiment, only 20 are still monks ; and of the 40 who have left the monastery it is reported that “there are some who realized that they were really called to married life” (Lemercier, 1965).
The Papal Court answered this “threat” the following decree: “You will not maintain in public or in private psychoanalytical theory or practice, under threat of suspension as a priest, and you are rigorously forbidden under threat of destitution to suggest to candidates for the monastery that they should undergo psychoanalysis” (Singleton, 1967).

Psychiatric Illness in the Clergy fue el título del estudio que desterró a los psiquiatras de los templos. Sus conclusiones eran chanantes:

The results were compared with a previously reported sample of medically qualified patients and their controls.
(1) The clerical patients had a higher average age at breakdown and presented on average nearly seven years later than the doctor patients.
(2) There was a significantly higher incidence of both organic psychoses and sexual deviation in this sample.
(3) There were no specific environmental stress factors found common to the majority of these clergymen.

En la noticia original de Mind Hacks, la primera que está enlazada ahí arriba, también se hace mención a un estudio similar que se realizó con un grupo de monjas. Pobres:

The book Lesbian Nuns, Breaking Silence contains a chapter by the former Sister Mary Benjamin of the Immaculate Heart of Mary convent in California.
Psychotherapists Carl Rogers and William Coulson arranged for the nuns to take part in encounter group, essentially a form of fashionable 60s group psychotherapy aimed as well people rather than patients for ‘personal growth’.
The effect was disastrous for the convent, with hundreds of the nuns defaulting on their vows, and several, including Sister Mary Benjamin, discovering repressed lesbian desires.
The convent eventually collapsed and was closed in 1970.

Como cuenta una entrevista con Coulson, que posteriormente se dedicó a dar charlas a grupos católicos y protestantes sobre los peligros de la terapia de grupo, parece que una parte importante de la responsabilidad fue la de ir pasando de mente en mente la idea de que uno responde por sus propios actos, no un abusón barbudo celestial:

“There’s a tragic book called Lesbian Nuns, Breaking Silence, which documents part of our effect on the IHM’s and other orders that engaged in similar experiments in ‘sensitivity” or ‘encounter.’ In a chapter of Lesbian Nuns, one former Immaculate Heart nun describes the summer of 1966 when we did the pilot study in her order. Sister Mary Benjamin got involved with us and became the victim of a lesbian seduction. An older nun in the group, ‘freeing herself to be more expressive of who she really was internally,’ decided that she wanted to make love to Sister Mary Benjamin. Well, Sister Mary Benjamin engaged in this; and then she was stricken with guilt, and wondered, to quote from her book, ‘Was I doing something wrong, was I doing something terrible? I talked to a priest–’ Unfortunately, we had talked to him first. “I talked to a priest,’ she says, ‘who refused to pass judgment on my actions. He said it was up to me to decide if they were right or wrong. He opened a door, and I walked through the door, realizing I was on my own.’ This is her liberation.

A lo mejor va siendo hora de cambiar salir del armario por salir del convento.