McMichaels, Susan W.  _Journey out of the Garden:  St. 
Francis of Assisi and the Process of Individuation._  (Mahwah,
NJ: Paulist Press, 1997).  xv, 158 pp.

Reviewed by Maryanne Hannan, edmahann@ix.netcom.com

     This book attempts to retrieve a more authentic Francis of
Assisi than the pious figure of popular imagination by using the
categories of Jungian depth psychology to examine Francis'
spiritual transformation.  Francis lived in 13th Century Italy,
but the author defends using Jung's 20th Century insights because
"there is a commonality in human experience that transcends space
and time." (p. 3)  The assumption then is that Francis can be a
spiritual guide for us today, because his was a "fully realized
life." (p. 4)  The tone is heuristic, verging at times on the
prescriptive.  The book would be of limited interest to
discussions on this list, but would find its audience among
readers trying to apply contemporary psychological insights to
long-standing hagiography.  
     
     Chapter One examines Francis' development in the context of
the 13th Century church.  Francis' genius was to give birth to a
new expression of Christian life, mendicant friars who did not
withdraw from the world, but rather who were deeply engaged in
the world, preaching, living in radical poverty, and witnessing
with Christ-like humility and non-violence.  The spiritual values
Francis' life expressed were desperately needed by the church,
but previous efforts at such reform had been condemned as heresy. 
The author contends that Francis' path of individuation was
sufficiently acceptable to the collective values of his
particular church that he was able to break through the
strictures of his culture and augment it with something new. 
 
     Chapter Two examines Francis' early life as the son of an
ambitious, prosperous merchant and a spiritual, artistic mother. 
His early adaptation was to suppress his identification with
maternal priorities in favor of the materialistic values of his
father, going so far as to join the Fourth Crusade in the hopes
of becoming a knight.  However, at a relatively young age his
adaptation began to break down in debilitating bouts of
depression. 

     Chapter Three looks at Francis' conversion, his final break
with his father, his definitive movement from secular to
spiritual values as the stripping away of his persona.  This
happened literally and figuratively:  Giotto depicts the dramatic
moment when he took off the clothes his father had given him and
stood naked before the bishop and all the townspeople, including
his father.

     Chapter Four deals with Francis' lifelong struggle with
shadow material.  Francis himself confessed that he began his
life of penance by finally recognizing and overcoming his
aversion to lepers.  From that point on, he sought out lepers as
a way of grounding himself and avoiding ego inflation.  Since the
shadow cannot be entirely assimilated into the conscious
personality, the author points to the emergence of Francis'
extreme asceticism and his ambivalence toward women as subsequent
shadow projections.  She also gives examples of times when
Francis finds creative solutions to incidents of collective
violence and scapegoating in his culture.
  
     Chapter Five explores Francis' anima. His reliance on his
mother during his break-down was the first step toward
actualizing his feminine energy.  He came in even greater contact
with his anima through the mechanism of projection with Clare of
Assisi and Lady Jacoba of Rome.  Onto Clare and the cloistered
nuns at San Damiano he projected his need for contemplative
spirituality.  Lady Jacoba, whose presence he sought while he lay
dying, provided much needed affirmation of his physical being. 
But the heart of this chapter, and much of the book, is how the
archetypal feminine infused his individuation journey and in the
process changed the course of Western spirituality.  In addition
to his sacred marriage to Lady Poverty, Francis was devoted to the Virgin Mary.  He used the humble birth of Jesus as a focal
point of his mystical experience and reproduced it in the first
Christmas creche at Grebbio.   His affinity for all creation, his
ability to experience there both connection and transcendence
derived also from his feminine energy. 

     Chapter Six uses Jungian typology to further understand
Francis' individuation.  The author suggests that his most
important legacy is  balance between an introverted contemplative
life and the extraversion of the active life.  Furthermore, he
was able to consciously access three of his four functions,
intuition, sensation, and feeling, and several examples are
offered.  Much of the pain Francis experienced towards the end of
his life when the order he established changed from his original
vision resulted from an inferior thinking function. 

     Chapter Seven treats the visions and stigmata Francis
received at LaVerna. Individuation progresses as the ego becomes
increasingly willing to experience messages from the unconscious,
and for Francis and some of his contemporaries, the stigmata was
a physical manifestation of his psycho-spiritual identification
with Christ. It signaled the possibility of a new human
experience, Every(wo)man's identification with Christ in his
suffering humanity.  Its radical implications, that incarnation
was available to everyone, has been muted over the centuries.

     Chapter Eight examines Francis' late poem, the "Canticle of
Brother Sun," as a poetic expression of the unitive consciousness
in which God and all creation are one.  The Self, as understood
by Jung, can express itself through the ego only in a life
realized through the process of individuation.

     The author speaks in her own voice in Chapter Nine, asking
why Francis speaks so compellingly to us today when much of his
energy has been lost over the centuries?   She uses Joseph
Campbell's discussion of the modern hero to answer the question.  

     In summary, the book does not purport to be a scholarly
work, but even with that caveat, the mixing of Jung's and
Campbell's work is disconcerting.  Also, the essentially
chronological organization of the book suffers from the competing
attempt to treat, one topic at a time, the various elements of
depth psychology. In addition to the nine chapters, the book has
an Introduction, Conclusion, chronology of Francis' life and
glossary defining commonly used Jungian terms.  Substantial
explanation in both areas is given in the text, as well.  There
are chapter notes and no bibliography.  Jungian references are
from secondary sources.
   
     Franciscan spirituality is so familiar that what Francis
actually added to the mix historically has blurred.  Therefore,
the examination of Francis against the backdrop of medieval
church culture and the search for what has been lost are strong
points. While it contains many provocative insights, in general
the book tries to do too much.  It might have worked better as a
series of essays exploring Francis' life from a Jungian
perspective.


Paulist Press