The experience of "consolation" in the Litterae Indipetae

• Autor(a) principal: Pacheco,Paulo Roberto de Andrada
• Data de Publicação: 2010
• Outros Autores: Massimi,Marina
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Psicologia em Estudo (Online)
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1413-73722010000200013
• topic: Experience; Society of Jesus; Litterae Indipetae - jesuit correspondence

The analysis of a particular type of Jesuit correspondence - the Litterae Indipetae - reveals the dynamism of the elaboration of experience which helps in the understanding of the modus vivendi that is based on what is commonly known as "Aristotelic-Thomist philosophical psychology". This article aims at showing the lived experience described in the letters and this specific modus vivendi (with its particular implications) as an attempt to answer the question: to what extent "consolation" - expressed through its own topoi of the genre of writing they are and the Jesuit's forma mentis (in a peculiar historical-cultural-institutional scope) - can interest modern psychology? As a result of this inquiry, it was found that the elaboration of "consolation", in the precise scope just described, considers that man is a unity (body and soul, reason and faith, sensation and intellect) and that, by living in order (with his own self and the world that surrounds him), it is possible for man to experience full joy and delight in analogy with the Divine Being.