THE DIVINITY IN THE HUMAN SOUL IN THE THOUGHT OF MEISTER ECKHART AND A POSSIBLE PARALLEL WITH PSYCHOANALYSIS (KEPPE)
Starting from the idea that the human being was created according to the image and likeness to God, Master Eckhart believed that a spark of the Divine Word is present deep in the soul - the divine Logos. However, man interposes many elements between himself and this divine presence within him, through images that he captures from the external world, which cover up or distance him from being united or equal to this genuine center in the soul.
To remedy this difficulty, the Dominican advocates a new practice (or actually a lack of practice for that purpose, meaning, a ‘no-doing’) so that man may be able to return to this original divine element within - the innermost bottom in his soul – practice that the theologian named a “detachment” (Abgeschiedenheit in German), in other words, a disconnection from everything that conceals the soul from that which is divine in its essence.
Integral Psychoanalysis (developed by N. Keppe) likewise considers the human being in three instances: the basic sanity of the human essence, that is connected to the divine; the distancing man makes from it by means of his psychopathology; and the recovery or return to that sane essence through the psychoanalytical process of conscientization.
Having noticed an plausible similarity between Meister Eckhart system and the findings of N. Keppe in the field of psychoanalysis, this research paper examines the key-points of both approaches, based on the available literature, and then suggests the possibility of a future comparative interdisciplinary study to verify that hypothesis.
The present work is divided into four chapters, ending with a few closing remarks, as follows: three stages of both lines of thought will be analyzed: the divine nature of human essence, the concealment of such original natural state and the proposal each of them puts forward so that one may return or recover or be aware of the original essence as it has been since its conception.
Initially we shall hold three moments of Meister Eckhart’s doctrine, then introduce the bases of Integral Psychoanalysis, and eventually exam a few issues that are supposedly analogous between the two teachings, so that a future comparison study