| According to writers of fool literature, "the number of fools is infinite." They are infinite because folly takes many forms, and all humans engage in it. In times of great transition it is especially easy to imagine man as a fool. But the fool is not always simple. On the contrary, the fool can embody opposites and can himself be a figure of transition, a catalyst of sorts. The fools this dissertation focusses on are such figures of transition. They appear in times of transition-times such as the Renaissance and psychotherapy-and they facilitate transition in others. This dissertation examines the figure of the fool as a therapeutic agent.;Chapter One investigates the appearance and tradition of the Renaissance humanist wise-fool. With antecedents in the figure of Socrates and in Sacred Scripture, the Renaissance humanist wise-fool is a therapeutic response to folly; the fool acts in a corrective manner, restoring balance, mystery, reverence, humility, and humanity to a bold, scholastic Renaissance Europe. Examining fools and folly in works by Petrarca, Nicholas of Cusa, Erasmus, Rabelais, and More, we observe the fool as a therapeutic agent.;The observations of Chapter One are supported in Chapter Two through a careful reading of Shakespeare's major fool plays. We find that the fool deconstructs language; he pushes language to its limits, reconnects us to the psychic fundaments of language, and through the joke identifies the coagulations of meaning and emotion to which he is present.;Chapter Three demonstrates how modern psychotherapy embodies the learned ignorance of the fool. In the learned ignorance of the wise-fool, we find a style of therapeutic interaction remarkably similar to those of several third force approaches (van den Berg, Rogers, vam Kaam). As well, in depth psychologies the conditions which set the stage for the appearance of the Renaissance humanist fool are once again present. It is this author's contention that the psychotherapist and humanist fool have much in common: both are educative figures whose concerns are the mysterious, and who operate under a system of repression, making sensible the nonsensible. |
