Hildegard as a Psychologist

Medieval medicine — and ancient medicine through it — heavily influenced Hildegard of Bingen’s own medical and psychological knowledge. It is very interesting, however, to notice how she transformed and put into practice what she learned through books and her personal experience, creating a quite original body of psychosomatic medicine which has been, in fact, brought back as such to the public in the second half of the 20th century by two researchers/practitioners: Dr. Gottfried Hertzka (1913-1997) and Dr. Winghard Strehlow (1937).

In a fractured world like ours — in which even nearby academic disciplines do not communicate with one another — it is all the more interesting to observe how she integrated her medical and psychological knowledge with her spirituality, art, music, herbalism, mysticism, and theology. And — dare I say it? — her politics. Such a holistic view, which goes even beyond holistic medicine, is perhaps her major wake-up call to our society today.

Hildegard believed that people after the Fall — that is, people in their concrete existence — can be divided into four groups, based on what in naturopathy today is called their “terrain” or their natural build-up. To her, such a physiological base was at the same time psychological.

Hildegard defined health as the correct flowing in a person of all the four humors of classical medicine, symbolically connected with the four elements: black bile (spleen)/earth, cold foam (brain)/water, blood (heart)/air, and yellow bile (liver)/fire. She considered the individual as a microcosm replicating, ideally, on a smaller scale, the balance of the macrocosm, the universe.

The excessive production of one of the four humors leads to its dominance, thus to imbalance, and, practically speaking, to belonging to one of the four temperaments of classical medicine: melancholic, phlegmatic, sanguine, and choleric. However, Hildegard’s descriptions of these temperaments or psychological types are quite detailed and not merely traditional.

She talks extensively about melancholy, making scholars wonder whether she herself suffered from it. She knew that melancholy hides deep down rage and fury — a knowledge confirmed only today by psychologists.

To her, melancholy is based in the spleen. It is identifiable with an excess of black bile. The basic cure for melancholy is therefore eating substances that support the health of the spleen. Chestnuts, for example, which are good food for everybody, must be eaten roasted  — not boiled or raw — by the melancholics. The other types must eat chestnuts prepared in a different way, or eat different plants altogether.

In general, Hildegard’s point is to suggest herbs and plants for consumption that bring back joy to the human spirit — as she writes. Mental health was really her end game, which she pursued through diet and herbal remedies, but also through lithotherapy and psychological attitudes.

Each thing that can be eaten contains subtleties which can contribute to the betterment of the flow of certain humors and the corresponding organs, and which are in the end nothing else than a form of viriditas/vitality being prepared and ingested to restore human viriditas. This is the organic basis of the human being. But Hildegard was also convinced of the curative power of precious stones, each corresponding again to specific psycho-physical needs. Finally, she also knew that it is mostly one’s thoughts that can nourish or poison a person. The natural substances or the stones without the correct attitude can do next to nothing.

In her extensive treatment of melancholy, she never even hints at the possibility that the melancholic soul is guilty for its dejected state. It seems obvious to us not to accuse a depressed person for her condition, but Hildegard’s matter-of-fact attitude was not so common in religious circles at all. Stating that everybody is a sinner did not mean to her that people should feel diminished by this information, but only that people are all sick and must be appropriately cured, since the original balance of the Edenic state has been lost.

She insisted that each person’s basic condition is natural and the basic treatment is material. She also gave suggestions for improving one’s state with one’s mental actions, that is, with one’s attitudes.

In her book Liber vitae meritorum, she strongly suggests that when one is negatively affected by a habit, one should not confront it directly. She knows that such a confrontation usually results in an uneven match between a strong, established behavior and a weak will. One should instead begin by fostering and nourishing the opposite virtue little by little.

For example, if I discover that I tend to keep things and people to myself, it is of no use to lament my avarice as the gravest of sins, or decide to give away all my money. It is helpful, instead, to start with small acts of kindness and open-heartedness, and then observe how I grow into my new self.

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Banner Image: As an abbess, Hildegard of Bingen guided the nuns of her abbey. 13th-century illumination. Wikimedia Commons

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Queries for Contemplation

What do you find convincing, if anything, in Hildegard’s understanding of physiology and psychology?

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Related Readings by Matthew Fox

Hildegard of Bingen, A Saint for Our Times: Unleashing Her Power in the 21st Century, p. 30

Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen

Hildegard of Bingen’s Book of Divine Works: With Letters & Songs

Gabriele Uhlein, Meditations with Hildegard of Bingen, Preface by Matthew Fox.

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