When I discovered Carl Theodore Dreyer’s 1928 The Passion of Joan of Arc a few years ago, I fell completely in artistic love with the star of the film, Maria Falconetti. It doesn’t take much intuition or even a knowledge of trivia about the movie to know that Falconetti and Dreyer must have had an intense relationship. The expressions he was able to capture in her closeups seem to hover at the precipice of ecstasy: in her often-upward gaze there is unspeakable grief and trust and awe. Nothing about her performance seems contrived: when she cries, and her tears are truthful and wet. It is obvious that Dreyer viewed her as a kind of muse.
The Passion was (I think) the only film she ever appeared in. Until then, she was a stage actress. The lore that I found online says that Dreyer saw her onstage and was immediately taken by her, and thought she could be a great inspiration to him, but wanted to know for sure that what he saw in her was not some glamorous trick, that it stemmed from something innate to her and not simply her costuming or an air she put on in public. To that end, he took her back to his hotel room, where he told her to remove her makeup, and then spent some time examining her face. Thus began his mentorship of her as an actress. To capture those stunning closeups in The Passion, Dreyer would take Falconetti and work with her alone for hours at a time. During these private sessions, Dreyer would say cruel things to her, and asked her to relive her most painful memories. When they shot group scenes, Dreyer would often level scathing critiques at Falconetti and, if memory serves, occasionally become angry with her to the point of throwing things or storming off when her performance did not meet his expectations.
It is possible that this relationship damaged Falconetti psychologically to such an extent that it led her to develop the habits and addictions that ultimately led to her death. Why lie? I’m jealous of her. Hear me out: was their relationship not a kind of tenderness? They invested so deeply in the creation of something greater than themselves that she gave herself fully to him, with real skin in the game, at the risk of ruin. There is a kind of magnificent honor and a wisdom in that. It’s what I admire in the Saints: better to die than to commit a mortal sin. Falconetti understood that this man, Dreyer, saw right through her. Imagine someone perceiving you so sharply that he takes you somewhere private and asks you to come out from that behind which you hide, to be discovered and chosen in spite or even because of what he sees when you make yourself entirely visible. The trust and knowing between the two of them—it is magnetic.
For years now I’ve hated how pop psychology has asked us to prioritize health in relationships über alles. It seems beside the point, and it forecloses upon so much of the beauty and intensity that is only possible if you actually put something significant at stake. In my observations of people I know who use therapy-approved models of relationship, their bonds with significant others and friends always feels rather cold and unfulfilling. They fall back on language like “emotional labor” and “drawing boundaries” whenever something is demanded of them that would hurt just a little bit, or whenever things become the slightest bit messy or complex. No one can ever impose upon them or ask anything of them that would truly cost them. Their relationships are cold and decorous and touchless and formal.
Several years ago, after I had what I believe to be a demonic encounter, I found myself entirely lost. The encounter made me, for a period of time, pretty dramatically deteriorate emotionally, because it made so little sense to me and left me feeling profoundly alone, confused, and scared. Before this happened, I felt as though I wanted some kind of spiritual mentor; after the fact, it felt like a matter of urgency. But I didn’t know how to get it, so instead, as I had learned to do over college and graduate school, I looked for a therapist.
It is an odd thing, looking for a therapist because of something that on its surface seems pathological but actually dwells in matters of the spirit. I had to figure out how to articulate what I was looking for in a way that made sense to mental health professionals, but there was no way for it to make sense, because what I needed was not something I could find in the context of a therapeutic relationship. I developed an elevator pitch over the course of dozens of consultations with therapists. It went something like, “I don’t want to be a good citizen or fix my habits. I want to write books and figure out if life has meaning and fall in love.” (This remains more or less true.)
I did ultimately find a therapist, and I still see him every few weeks. He is only a few years older than I am. I find many things about him endearing and the rest infuriating. Knowing that he would probably try to throw me into bedlam if I ever told him about my demonic encounter, I kept it from him for the first few months of our therapeutic relationship. When I did tell him, he told me I had delusions of grandeur and was clinically psychotic, and tried as hard as he could to get me to submit to a psychiatric evaluation in an attempt to arrive at a solid diagnosis, which I refused. A few sessions later, he asked me to sign a form that basically stated that he could not be held liable if I killed myself.
This form and his proposal that I sign my name to it troubled me deeply. It was the smart thing for him to do, to have it on record that I agreed that I was nuts and that a fruit of my nuts-ness was a refusal of orthodox treatments of all kinds. But I was hurt and offended by it: we had developed a closeness, and a trust. He was new at his job, and often made what I felt to be missteps, but I practiced continual forgiveness. To me, that forgiveness pushed our relationship beyond the sterile confines of a provider-client and into the human-human: I was paying for a service, after all, and if I was not happy with it I could have terminated our relationship, provided that I regarded it as only transactional. But I cared about him, and wanted to work things through, so I forgave him. To me, he should have known that I wouldn’t drag him under the bus with me if I did decide to fling myself beneath one after all. But as it turned out, he felt perfectly willing to chalk me up to a potential liability, and it seemed to me that he disregarded all of the good faith we had between us as two people who knew each other, and not just therapist and client. I felt inhuman, like a walking collection of symptoms or a mountain of potential paperwork.
Of course I never signed that form. I stand by it.
We continue to see each other. The relationship is fine, but nothing spectacular. I’ve learned how to manage my feelings such that I don’t get too attached to him or invested in what he thinks. It all feels completely grotesque and dissociated, but it’s what I have to do.
About a year into seeing him, I moved from the suburbs to the city and began attending Mass every week at a church near my apartment. After not very long, I also started going to Confession with some regularity, which is where I began to come to know the man who now acts as my spiritual advisor. I meet with him every week. I often find myself feeling a little guilty, wondering if I’m imposing on his time. But he continues to meet with me, and the fact of the matter is that I do need the time and guidance. Those of you who read this with any regularity know how prone I am to melancholy, and to overthinking, and to a stubbornness that renders me so bullheaded that someone should really just take me to a butcher’s to break me down to my meat. Instead, this very sweet priest meets with me me once a week for advising, Confession, and even sometimes just shooting the breeze.
I have a kind of abiding affection for him in the way that a daughter might be proud of her father simply for the fact that he belongs to her in a particular way: it makes me feel very special that he meets with me. Once, I was feeling sort of hopeless, and he asked me if he could lay hands on me to pray, and then he did. It occurred to me as his hand rested gently on the top of my head how odd and even forbidden it seemed, even though it was completely innocent. A mentor, touching me? I’ve had a few mentor figures in my life—professors and therapists—but I never touched any of them. To me, this is one of the worst limitations of professional relationships that are also inevitably emotionally intimate: you can tell someone about the time your brother did something truly terrible to you, and they won’t even be able to reach out and grasp your hand.
It isn’t that our relationship is a truly physical one; I don’t want you to think that I’m developing some sort of inappropriate relationship with a holy man who is helping me grow in holiness. But touch is not off the table because beyond him being my teacher, we are actually in one another’s lives, with no binding contracts or exchanges of invoices. Another time, he and I got into something of an argument. Afterward, he asked me if he could hug me. I was a little hesitant at first, but I said yes. I’d been crying a little, and when we embraced, he really held me, and stroked my hair, and told me things were going to be fine. One more memory of touch: I have a few tattoos on my arm, and a few days ago I saw him and he asked me about them, and he held my arm as I explained each one.
What makes this kind of relationship possible is that it is not exactly a professional one; rather, it is a vocational one, tied to the stuff of our souls. There is no need for rigidity and distance provided that the way we interact does not jeopardize our spirit, our relationship with God. We know the rules, and they come from heaven; there is no need to maintain things like professional boundaries, and in fact that would damage the relationship, because the things that want to swallow souls whole don’t just operate from nine to five, and they are often impolite, messy, and too much information. And it means that if I trust him, I can—in many ways I must—let him truly change and teach me.
Last week, there was a Holy Hour at my church, and I knew I would want to receive Communion there, but I was unfortunately in a state of mortal sin, which meant I had to go to Confession beforehand. That meant that I had to go to the Basilica, not my usual church, because there would be no Confession available before the Holy Hour. Yesterday, Sunday, I went to Confession with my advisor before Mass. I began, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been just a few days since my last Confession, and I am sorry for these and all my sins.”
“You did not confess with me a few days ago, did you?” he asked.
“I didn’t. I wanted to receive Communion at the Holy Hour so I went to the Basilica.”
“I don’t want you to do that, Joan,” he said. “I think it is not a good idea for you to just go to Confession whenever; it will make you scrupulous, and I think it is better for you to grow and deepen your familiarity only with one confessor who knows you and knows how to be of help to you.”
It won’t be a surprise, I don’t think, when I tell you that this, too, made me feel deeply affirmed. Sometimes it can feel like the priest and the penitent have an almost mercenary relationship: the latter gets their absolution and goes on their merry way. It can in fact be this cut-and-dry, but I would rather have some form of sacred and attentive bond with the person who I allow to see my soul. It was reassuring to know that this man, my confessor, understood this about me and named it out loud. I think to some it might cross over what might be called “healthy” boundaries: I am sure there are those out there whose interior alarm bells go off when I say that he told me not to confess to another priest when the sacrament would be valid no matter which priest heard it. I don’t think my therapist would like it at all. But I follow my confessor’s advice with a kind of blindness because of the depth of my trust in him and the work in which he encourages me. And that work is worth getting a little defenseless for.
Screw healthy relationships, and screw boundaries. By worldly pop-psychological standards, Christ’s relationship with us is an abusive one. He asked his disciples, before his Agony in the Garden, to stay awake late into the night, and was angry with them when they fell asleep. Some really annoying neoliberal social worker might call that a form of psychological abuse. He moves people to endure loneliness, starvation, isolation, bodily harm. If that were that, and death were the end of the story, then He would be a cruel king; but He isn’t, because these injuries are nothing compared to what he has waiting for us. But we do need to give ourselves wholly to Him, to be willing to wreck ourselves in this life, to let Him take us for all we have. Therapy helps us live a good life; the sacrament of Confession helps us know when and how to lay it down, and who to truly trust to help us do that. And look: in this pursuit of love, while we might come to a type of harm, we can really meet one another, and we are already being poured out like a libation.