... because they have frequently misunderstood what they heard and learnt, they bowdlerize sermons and catechist texts. The result is mysterious incomprehensible communication in which supernatural ideas, soothsayings and prophecies are hopelessly confused.

It is not surprising to anyone familiar with the infantile psyche that it is mostly the youngest of all who are able to enjoy visions. They live in fear of purgatory, 'the place of purification', 'the fire ... for punishing those who have not done penance for their sins' (1 Corinthians 3:15, German version.)

Children fear the threatened punishment, so they do everything in their power to avoid the torments of hell. With naive passion and unbridled childish imagination they become inflated and involved in fantastic ideas and undertakings. There is nothing they long for more than to meet the wondrous figures of the religious world face to face. Every day they learn from beautiful legends about favoured people who have met members of the Holy Family. Parsons and Sunday school teachers have told them these legends, and the Church does not lie. (Stories with ghastly contents, as every psychologist knows, can cause anxiety neuroses in children.) Out of the fantasy grows the enjoyment of forcing miraculous experiences to occur. Then the children 'suddenly' experience, but with full sensory perception, true dreams, which have a surprising content of truth (namely the figures, symbols and words of their religion) 'which appear to lie outside the normal apparition. The objects of the true dreams have long before been recorded by the dreaming psyche. Now, in a flash, they become the

"revelation of the reality of the conscious".' (Herder.) The striving for pleasure, in the case of the children their joy in the vision, is fulfilled.

It is unfair to dispute the subjective 'truth' of their visions. If the Church does not want visions to exist on a large scale, it must change or exclude the training in readiness to receive experiences, the wish to be confronted with the Holy Family. That is something it will certainly not do, as it can make very good use of the so-called 'genuine' visions in its proselytizing work. Walter Nigg, the hagiographer already mentioned, who wanted to see the return of the saints, expresses a pious hope that is equally applicable to the 'necessity' of visions: 'Admittedly they are virtually forgotten nowadays; they are spoken of infrequently or not at all. Yet the silence will not endure, for suddenly they will speak to men again.' The Church, too, has its specific wish for pleasure, for pleasure in miracles.

In order to increase the procurement of pleasure in the faith, some tricks have been integrated into the Mass. The American Leslie M. LeCron[19] says that a burning candle is best suited for the stimulation of heterosuggestion (and what else is devotion?). It should be set up in such a way that it is pleasant to watch. 'The nickering flame of a candle has a hypnotic effect.' Campbell proved by experiments that white, with its many frequencies, provoked intense feeling, of pleasure. 'Brightness contrasts with the boring monotony of the surroundings and hence produces pleasure.'

Naturally the smart ecclesiastical bigwigs had no academic justification when they installed the Lucerna, or eternal lamp, before the altar as a 'sign of the presence of Christ as light of the world' (John

8, 12). But during its 2,000 years of history the Church has shown an infallible instinct, a sixth and seventh sense for 'effect'. For a long time now, the eternal lamp has not been confined to the interior of the Church. Candle stands offer the effective illumination for sale right at the entrance. There is not a single church without countless candles burning away before altar and high altar, before pictures of the Madonna and saints. They excite the desired raptures.

At places of pilgrimage candle orgies create Orphic mysteries which stimulate a state of preparedness for miracles with their sea of light. Torch- and candle-bearing processions are common on high holidays. In the light of present-day psychological knowledge, they effectively stimulate that state of

'being outside one's self in which even miracles still have a chance of being believed.

I have no intention of entering the boundless territory of psychology, but I should like to illuminate one sector which can answer some questions - I refer to the psychotherapeutic method of psychodrama.

A group of patients act out their conflicts to liberate themselves from their frustrations and neuroses.

The therapy effects a healing process.

Actually this highly modern concept can be found as early as the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384

B.C.-322 B.C.). Aristotle realized that ideas do not work outside, but in, the body as an effective force.

His idea of entelechy (= forming power) which he took over from physics was introduced into his moral philosophy which survived for centuries. According to it, the mind is matterless energy (= the first forming power). Tragedy, say Aristotle, achieves through catharsis (= purification), the decision between good and bad, a miraculous healing effect? (Psychodrama!).

Dr. Ploeger, a university lecturer [20] explains the process as follows: 'An implicit condition for it among the spectators is their identification with the hero, whose actions they accept and find in agreement with their own ideals and motives.' (Such identifications exist at all places of pilgrimage — with members of the Holy Family!) Dramatic representation of the conflicts effecting a cure in the Aristotelean sense produces effects much like those obtained by psychodrama as practised in western and eastern countries today.

In Chinese philosophy of the fourth and third centuries B.C. there existed the concept of the Tao, which means something like path or way. Tao was the world's primal cause, which was at the root of all phenomena, but was beyond rational perception. In this philosophy the Yin and Yang (dark and light) stand for positive and negative values. As Professor Ilza Veith [21] says in his essay 'Psychiatric Thought in Chinese Medicine', the Chinese have never, like other cultures, imagined their creator as a figure who demanded obedience and devotion. Undisturbed by a punitive vengeful god at the beginning of things, the Chinese sought edification and healing in the additive power of likeminded

'souls', in the grouping of family and friends. Here, too, the mind of a community which was fixated on an idea did its work and the cure was accepted as a miracle.

Those are examples of the stages of the development on the way to psychodrama with its 'mechanisms of inter-human reference.' [22]

Autogene training, which is relevant in this connection, also has a solid tradition. The Gottingen neurologist Johannes Heinrich Schultz (1884-1970) introduced this kind of self-hypnosis, which leads to relaxation through a certain inner attitude, into general use. It has an approximate counterpart in the incubation or temple sleep of antiquity. Incubation effected divine revelations and the cure of diseases in dreams, (incubare: to lie down in a consecrated place).

In classical times incubation leading to relaxation was preceded by bathing. (Lourdes and elsewhere!)

'The actual incubation was carried out peacefully in the abaton, the holy of holies of the temple."

(What other effect do churches and altars have?) Dr. Von Schumann[23] says that muscle relaxation and falling asleep during incubation (as in autogene training) must be in close correlation, for then the suggestible and credulous patients, uncritically wide open for a religio-magical cure, can be healed and liberated of their disorders. The person seeking a cure behaves passively during incubation and 'awaits