Daughter of God: The personal complex in the life of Joan of Arc .

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Daughter of God:
The personal complex in the life of Joan of Arc .

Joan of Arc was one of us: beautiful, burdened, powerful, despairingly vulnerable — and impelled by extraordinary forces largely beyond her control. Triggered by cultural and historic currents, but driven by agents rooted in her interior world, I believe Joan’s experience can best be understood through the lens of personal complexes.

Joan: compelling and compelled .

I came to this research project interested in Joan’s ‘voices,’ three ethereal visitors that encouraged her to take up the sword and liberate her nation. But as I explored, I begin to suspect that this klatch of saints and angels was secondary to the deeper drama: the presence of a complexed archetype, an archetype shared by the historical Jesus, which I will describe as savior-type. On this basis I reframed my approach to my research, and dug in with these questions: To what degree was the life and death of Joan of Arc the ‘playing out’ of the narrative of a savior-type complex? And, what does her holy, tragic journey teach us about the perils and potentials of our own complexes?

There is nothing in Joan’s story, after all, that we are exempted from. Archetype, complex, trauma, ecstasy — these things are a part of everyone’s psychic makeup. To the degree that we respect the capacities of our complexes — to the degree that we honor and befriend them —  we can begin to take up, and reign in when needed, our own power in the world. At the same time, by deliberately creating space for the speaking of our complexes, we are far less likely to be led by them into catastrophe — a heartbreaking betrayal, a loss of faith, a metaphorical or literal burning at the stake.

Complex theory and other complex theories .

One helpful way to begin thinking about complexes is not with definitions, but with metaphor and poetry. Carl Jung, for instance, offered us the uneasy image that we are not the masters of our own inner houses.^{footnote 1} Even more strikingly, W.H. Auden observed, We are lived by powers we pretend to understand.^{footnote 2} Within the world of our psyches, which we so often perceive as a unity under our egoic control, exist the complexes. Conceptualized alternatively as splinter psyches,^{footnote 3} parts,^{footnote 4} and subpersonalities,^{footnote 5} these figures dwell in the house of our inner world and are capable of not only moving the furniture, but taking control of the place and re-ordering it according to their own perspectives and desires.

Jung developed and clarified the concept of complexes, perhaps most clearly articulating the premise in his A Review of the Complex Theory.^{footnote 6} While other practitioners, including Freud and Adler, have made use of the complex model,^{footnote 7} the theoretical heart of this paper orients around Jung.

Shalit, a Jungian, offers perhaps the clearest definition of a complex, describing it as a network of associations, images, ideas, memories, or the like, clustered around a nuclear, archetypal core of meaning, and characterized ... by a common emotional tone.^{footnote 8} Stein goes on to unpack the theory, saying that complexes have a tendency to commandeer the ego in a manner not unlike possession.^{footnote 9} In this way, they alter our behavior, affecting our perspectives, memories, and beliefs about the past, and the future.^{footnote 10} At the same time, complexes color our experience of the world by way of their penchant for projecting inner material onto the outside world. Projections, says Jung, change the world into the replica of one’s own unknown face.^{footnote 11} Additionally, Shalit tells us, A strong autonomous complex will attract whatever it encounters and draw it into its energy field.^{footnote 12}

Beyond their experiential qualities, one of the key features of the complex is that its shell — the trappings of the personal and contemporary cultural factors that give it its ‘appearance’ — contains the living dispositions,^{footnote 13} known as the archetypes. Understood as a pattern or energy that structures the psyche at its deepest, collective, universal depths,^{footnote 14} the archetype is ancient, numinous, and bears the effective powers of an intrapsychic god. Sitting at the hearts of our many complexes, then, is a veritable pantheon populating our inner world. Because of their power, archetypes — and presumably the complexes they ‘wear’ — have a unique ability to ... bedazzle consciousness, and to bind one to other realities.^{footnote 15}

With this bedazzling and binding capability in mind, my examination will also incorporate aspects of trance theory — particularly the work of trance researcher Dennis Weir. Hypnotism is part of the rich history of depth psychology,^{footnote 16} and works intricately with questions of dissociation and multiplicity of psyche. Because being ‘in complex’ is a state of dissociation,^{footnote 17} and because specialists have noted a strong overlap between the process of dissociation and the function of trance states,^{footnote 18 footnote 19} I believe there are important questions to ask about the relationship of complexes to altered states of consciousness.

The extraordinary Joan: warrior, mystic & girlpower role model .

... We shall raise such a battle-cry as there has not been in France in a thousand years ...

— Joan of Arc^{footnote 20}

By 1412, the year Joan of Arc was born,^{footnote 21} the French had been warring with England for seventy five years.^{footnote 22} On the front lines of the Armagnac-Burgundian conflict^{footnote 23} it is unlikely that anyone in village of Domremy could have suspected that this infant girl would ultimately turn the tide in the conflict later known as the Hundred Years’ War.

The justification for the war essentially revolved around the question of who should sit on the French throne.^{footnote 24} And, in fact, during Joan’s early life there was a figure waiting in the wings who, many French believed, deserved the crown. Known as the Dauphin, he would ultimately become — thanks in large part to Joan of Arc — King Charles VII of France.^{footnote 25}

But before Joan would take up the sword, she was a devout Christian child in a war-torn community^{footnote 26} — certainly no less traumatized than any child of war we might meet today. She learned the crafts traditionally expected of women, spinning and cooking, in an apprenticeship that began as soon as a girl was able to fetch and carry.^{footnote 27} And yet, it was this apparently common girl who would come to hear voices who she believed were emissaries of God.^{footnote 28} This child who would, in time, help liberate France from the abuses of the English.^{footnote 29} She would inspire her people, see her king crowned — and, finally, she would die at the hands of clerics who would condemn her as a heretic.^{footnote 30}

Trauma enough .

Once, for fear of the Burgundians, I left home and went to the town of Neufchateau ...

— Joan describing a wartime flight from her village^{footnote 31}

The causal foundation of a complex, as Jungians understand it, is trauma.^{footnote 32} The first question we need to consider, then, is whether Joan was sufficiently traumatized to result in the powerful sort of complex that I suspect she carried.

The French war with the English was not a distant, theoretical reality to Joan. As noted above, Joan’s family fled their home to shelter in a neighboring village, an effort to avoid an invasion by some 2,500 soldiers.^{footnote 33} At the same time, the English military was known for its morale-shattering assaults, systematically ravag[ing] the land, burning whatever they didn’t steal ... and killing livestock.^{footnote 34}

That Joan lived under constant specter of violence might, by itself, be sufficient to birth the savior-type complex I will explore here, but this is not her sole trauma.

In Joan’s day, the legal marrying age was thirteen.^{footnote 35} Joan’s father wasted no time getting the ball rolling; negotiations with a marriageable young man in a nearby city were soon underway.^{footnote 36}

It is easy to imagine that marriage, in itself, might have been a frightening proposition for very young, medieval women, a circumstance that caused them to leave their familiar, childhood home, subjecting them to the veritable ownership of a stranger. But for Joan, there was much more at stake. In the Middle Ages, a woman’s greatest spiritual asset was her chastity. Only a virgin escaped the pollution inherent to her sex.^{footnote 37} Chastity connected her to the virgin martyrs of the early Church and improved a woman’s reward in heaven.^{footnote 38} A mystic like Joan, then, might have felt that the loss of her virginity could damage her connection to God. If we further complicate matters by considering that Joan’s faith was almost certainly a means to manage her fears of English violence, the prospect of marriage might well have left her in real terror. Taking all these factors together, it seems likely that the possibility of a wedding threatened the archetypal core of her complex, her mystical root.

It is in this context that Joan’s complex stepped up to defend itself, Joan, and France.

The complex calls .

When I was thirteen, I had a voice from God to help me govern myself.

— Joan of Arc^{footnote 39}

It is probably no coincidence that Joan first heard the first of her voices from God at the age of thirteen. After all, As Joan’s father would discover, it’s not easy to marry off a daughter who has given herself to God.^{footnote 40}

Understanding from the outset that her voices came from a holy, rather than infernal source, Joan would, in time, come to identify them as the Saints Catherine, Margaret and Michael.^{footnote 41} At first, they spoke of simple religious obedience,^{footnote 42} but eventually they came to discuss more urgent matters. It was Joan’s task, they explained, to help liberate France from the awful yoke of the English. She would, they explained, drive out the English; to bring [the Dauphin] to be crowned and anointed at Reims; to rescue the Duke of Orleans from the hands of the English; and to raise the siege of Orleans.^{footnote 43}

This list of tasks seems strangely ‘out of the blue,’ for a young woman in the Middle Ages. Why would anyone — including God and Joan’s complexes — even imagine that a young woman could accomplish such things? And considering how restricted women’s lives were, who would let her? But in fact, there were a number of female visionaries who concerned themselves with politics in the late 1300s,^{footnote 44} and might have inspired a devout young woman. At the same time, a prophesy so widespread that it was astonishing^{footnote 45} predicted that a maiden ... should bear ... arms and deliver the kingdom of France from the enemy.^{footnote 46} These cultural factors, not to mention a nighttime dream of her father’s that Joan would run away with a band of soldiers,^{footnote 47} might all be understood as forces that shaped the shell of Joan’s savior-type complex.

Even as these images begin to account for the shape that Joan’s complex would take, the fact of the complex, itself, becomes apparent, as well. Barstow notes that Joan’s testimony in her heresy trial gives us a rare glimpse into the formation of a new persona, ^{footnote 48} suggestive of the sort of incompatib[ility] with the habitual attitude of consciousness Jung ascribes to complexes.^{footnote 49} At the same time, Joan’s communications in the form of letters, and most of her testimony at court, carries an extraordinary fervency, a fiery religiosity that might be understood as intense affect and intense energy that Shargel suggests are hallmarks of complexes.^{footnote 50} As we will see below, there is also good reason to suspect that Joan’s savior-type complex enacted powerful projections, as well as creating a magnetic pull, drawing in perceptions that validate [its] themes.^{footnote 51}

The life of a savior .

... I promise and declare to you that I will not abandon you as long as I shall live.

— Joan’s letter to the people of Reims^{footnote 52}

The Christianity of Joan’s era embraced the concept of imitatio Christi, the imitation of the life of Christ.^{footnote 53} Taken by Jung to mean that we should follow the ideal [of Christ] and seek to become like it,^{footnote 54} Von Franz suggests that this practice could even embrace extremes such as dying at the early age that Jesus did.^{footnote 55}

In an era and culture so dominated by Christianity, it makes sense that a good many devotees would fold themselves around the imitatio. And what better imitatio Christi than to take up the very same complex lived out to the full^{footnote 56} by Jesus himself? In words, deeds, and ultimate demise, Joan’s career aligns with Christ’s.^{footnote 57} It is unlikely this was a conscious effort on her part; it is clear she embraced Jesus as a savior figure and would have thought it a heresy to claim a Christ-like role or powers for herself. Rather, I feel this alignment underscores the power of the savior-type complex constellated in her psyche.

Joan’s words, for instance, began to echo those of Jesus. I was sent for the consolation of the poor and destitute, she said, mirroring the Gospel.^{footnote 58} Both Jesus and Joan were heralded by prophesy,^{footnote 59} and where Jesus said, I was sent for this purpose, Joan proclaimed, I was born for this.^{footnote 60}

Jesus drafted his own death warrant^{footnote 61} by angering people in power. Joan did something similar with her insistence on wearing men’s clothes — essential for practicality and safety^{footnote 62} — and by her refusal to conform to other expectations placed on women.^{footnote 63} After her capture by the English, she was paraded throughout many of the lands of France ... then the English, her own Via Dolorosa.^{footnote 64}

Christ-like, Joan was also associated with miracles. Waters rose and winds shifted in her army’s favor.^{footnote 65} Her prayers seemingly returned a dead infant — three days lifeless, its body blackened — back to life.^{footnote 66}

And, of course, like the savior she loved so well, her life would end in tragedy. Like Christ, she was betrayed — Jesus by Judas, Joan by the king she served^{footnote 67} — and was ultimately put to death for her ‘crimes.’

Harrison sums up the connection between Joan and Jesus beautifully, poetically: Figures of purity, free from sexual stain. Impossible people, alien architects of their own destruction.^{footnote 68} From start to finish, the savior-type archetype would have its way in the life of Joan, ultimately enfolding itself in a complex so powerful that Joan was not the only one to be affected by it.

Charismatic trance .

The people of Orleans, when they first saw her in their city, thought that it was an angel from heaven ... come down to save them.

— Willard Trask^{footnote 69}

Throughout Joan’s story, we see accounts of her extraordinary charismatic gift.^{footnote 70} While still at home, she would defend herself in court, convincing a judge to dismiss a wrongful suit against her.^{footnote 71} In the larger world, she would convince a king to put an army in her hands.^{footnote 72} In time, French citizens of all stripes would leave their homes in hopes of joining Joan’s army like the Magi following their star.^{footnote 73}

Another striking way that Joan seemed to affect others was in the quelling of sexual desire among the men of her army. Normally a young woman in a group of soldiers would be considered an object of desire and/or a target for assault. And yet, the men around her believed it was impossible to desire her ... Suddenly their sexual feelings were checked.^{footnote 74} The effect was so striking that Joan was believed to have safeguarded her virginity by using supernatural powers.^{footnote 75}

Barstow notes that none of Joan’s contemporaries doubted her power; their question was whether it came from God or the Devil.^{footnote 76} So, what was it about Joan that gave off this sense of mana? What drew people to her, much in the way they were drawn toward Jesus?

In imitation of Christ .

There who were many who wanted to see me, but they kissed my garments only when I could not help it.

— Joan of Arc^{footnote 77}

Earlier in this paper, I noted Smith’s contention that complexes are able to bedazzle consciousness, and to bind one to other realities.^{footnote 78} Shargel notes their inductive ... magnetic pull.^{footnote 79} If we take complexed archetypes seriously — if we ascribe a reality to them and allow their numinosity to suggest deep meaning — then the idea that Joan and Jesus shared a savior-type complex is no small assertion. The charismatic power of Jesus affected people in his lifetime and continues to resonate through many world cultures to this day. On this basis, it does not seem unreasonable to suggest that, by way of the archetype at the heart of her complex, Joan, too, may have wielded an unconscious, complex-based ‘magnetism’ — essentially a trance state — over the people she encountered.

I would also expand this examination of complex-centered ‘magnetism’ to consider that other characteristics of trance may inhere where complexes are involved. For instance, Weir posits that highly compelling individuals — he lists Jesus, Hitler, Rasputin, and the Buddha among them — are themselves under the effect of what he calls a charismatic trance, the basis of which is often a trauma such as exposure to conditions of war.^{footnote 80} When we are in the presence of someone who is ... generating and maintaining a charismatic trance, [we] are compelled to go into a trance [ourselves].^{footnote 81} I would tentatively propose that both of these phenomena — the individual’s trance, the capacity to induce trance in others — may be potential functions of the personal complex.

If Joan’s complex, then, was able to ‘cast’ her charismatic trance over the people outside of her, this would go a significant way towards explaining phenomena like the damping of sexual desire in the soldiers of her company, her persuasiveness over figures who seemed likely to disbelieve her, the King’s putting an army in her hands. Did people see Joan as an angel simply because she was beautiful, spiritual figure — or did something in her psyche compel this perception?

Consider also the miracles ascribed to Joan. While I would be disinclined to ascribe any miracle strictly to exclusively intrapsychic factors, I would suggest that it is at least possible that Joan’s miracles constituted other realit[ies]^{footnote 82} projected onto others by a savior-type charismatic trance as described by Weir.

This sculpting of the behavior and perceptions around her is, perhaps, the most striking aspect of Joan’s imitatio Christi. It also serves as an incredible portrait of just how powerful complexes might be when they are given their full breadth and set into a context that is ready to receive them.

The bitter end .

Am I so horribly and cruelly used, that my clean body, never yet defiled, must this day be burnt and turned to ashes!

— Joan of Arc^{footnote 83}

The trouble with emulating the narrative of Christ is that things are unlikely to turn out well, at least for the physical body that houses the savior-type complex.

It is interesting to note that there came a time, after completing the tasks Joan’s saintly advisors initially set for her, that Joan’s charisma seems to have dwindled. Her time in prison and a failed escape attempt make clear that she was less and less able to affect her situation by persuasion or action.^{footnote 84} Perhaps this is because, as Shargel notes, complexes tend to peter out once their affect is discharged.^{footnote 85} After their libido is spent, complexes descend back into the unconscious, leaving the ego-complex with a baffling feeling of, What the heck just happened? It may be that Joan’s uneasy end came as it did — terrible, and perhaps also surprising given Joan’s earlier momentum — because the complex receded.

On the other hand, it may be that Joan’s charisma only seemed to fail because the narrative arc of her complex had moved into another phase. There came a time for Jesus, too, when worldly circumstances seemed to begin to fail him. And so, Joan’s bitter end may, in fact, reflect not that her complex had receded, but that it was entering its ‘home stretch,’ the final conclusion, unavoidable for Christ — and thus, why less so for Joan? The archetype would culminate in a terrible sacrifice on the altar of the world. For Jesus, a crucifixion. For Joan, a burning at the stake.

What possible alternative? .

I was born for this.

— Joan of Arc^{footnote 86}

At times, it seemed Joan understood her story would be a short one. At one point, she said she only expected to last a year.^{footnote 87} But in other moments, she believed, I shall be freed.^{footnote 88} We can only wonder, at a distance, which parts of her knew her time was limited, and which fought for hope.

In the final examination, it is difficult to see a way out of this painful ending for Joan. Given the structure of the myth that her complex was bound to, and her psyche’s extraordinary dedication to it, her imitatio Christi seems very much like an all-or-nothing proposition. At this distance, it feels clear that her savior-type complex, and ultimately her full psyche, surrendered utterly to the journey God had set out for her, as was authentic to her mystic’s nature.

On that basis, I am uncertain whether it is fitting to ask questions like, What might bring greater consciousness to this complex for Joan? or With greater awareness of her complex, how might things have turned out differently? But let’s take a few moments to explore these issues, understanding that Joan, herself — had she known how things would end — may have resisted such intervention.

Although some people seem to come into this world with a mystical bent — and it appears that Joan was one of them — it also seems reasonable, as noted above, to suspect that Joan’s mysticism was one way to manage the anxieties resulting from growing up in a war zone. This becomes particularly clear when we see that the ‘objectives’ set out for Joan involved tasks that, if successful, would seem likely to save her country and put the war to an end.

Here, then, we see the projection-making capacity of Joan’s complex. Joan was once a little girl in a war-swept countryside. It is not hard to imagine that her prayers included a wish, a hope — wouldn’t somebody come save her and her community? And so, in the way of the binary nature of complexes,^{footnote 89} Joan’s psyche cast her as the savior — giving her a sense of control over what had felt uncontrollable — then projected the need (and ability) to be saved onto France.

Given these possibilities, the simplest place to begin to help Joan would have been in her early life. There is a common refrain in mental health circles: It’s easier to help a child than heal an adult. True, the only ‘mental health care system’ in Joan’s day was the Church. But let’s imagine a relatively enlightened figure, perhaps a female anchorite who Joan felt drawn to visit. If such a figure were to empathize with Joan’s fears (‘It must feel terrifying to have to flee your home when the English soldiers are coming.’ ‘I imagine you hear lots of scary stories about things the English armies do.’) and give Joan a chance to express her distress — her wish for a savior, maybe even her frustration at God or Jesus for failing to do something — this might have put Joan on the path to a greater consciousness concerning her inner situation. Our fictitious anchorite might have also suggested ways for Joan to take actions that were less drastic than leading an army and subjecting herself to the judgment of men and, ultimately, to the flame. Perhaps Joan might have undertaken charitable work to aid the victims of the war, helping them restore their homes or offering them comfort as their injuries healed. Another option might have been to join a convent that was doing this kind of work, if such a setting were available.

In this way, Joan might have come into a more moderate, safer version of her imitatio Christi, and her savior-type complex might have played out more gently. Rather than burning at the stake, perhaps Joan would have become a mystic like Hildegard of Bingen or Julian of Norwich, but without the awful suffering — and possible sense of betrayal — at the end.

What remains .

Joan of Arc’s story evokes a difficult question. When the functioning of a complex alleviates suffering for many, but does so at great cost to the individual who hosts the complex, is it more ethical to intervene, or should we let the complex run its course? If Joan were able to ’step out of herself’ and see the long view of things — how she changed history and has inspired so many — I imagine she might choose to leave the complex in place and suffer the consequences to herself. Especially when it comes to spiritual matters, the decision that makes the most practical sense is not always the most desirable outcome, after all.

There are other valuable inquiries we might make concerning Joan and her complexes. The question of whether her voices were complexes — and how her various complexes interacted — remains an area ripe for consideration. Additionally, I hope to continue to pursue the possibility of a link between trance states and the functioning of complexes in the inner and outer worlds.

But, finally, what remains for all of us to consider in Joan’s story is the degree to which our own complexes move us — and whether we are harnessing that power healthily, or being commandeered by it to the detriment of ourselves or others. Joan reminds us that the powers of archetype and complex should not be underestimated. One girl’s complexes, set into the unique context of her day, changed the face of Europe. They drove her to a bitter, brutal end. They awakened in her a beauty that compels us even now. In that sense, Joan’s complexes still entrance us. It is important that we consider what beauties and terrors we, ourselves, are projecting into the world before us, what mirrors we find ourselves stepping into.