The Seba library treats Antirrhesis in 7 passages, across 3 authors (including Coniaris, Anthony M., Hausherr, Irénée, Jung, Carl Gustav).
The Fathers of the Philokalia believed that great power resided in the Word of God. Augustine, for example, was converted through the reading of God’s word
This passage establishes the Philokalic conviction that spoken or read Scripture carries transformative power, the theological ground on which antirrhesis — counter-speech drawn from Scripture against demonic thoughts — depends.
, Philokalia: The Bible of Orthodox Spirituality, 1998thesis
AnoropoL, trenchant as swords, were the great Fathers with nuisances whose chatter imperiled their penthos.
Hausherr’s account of the Desert Fathers’ use of sharp, sword-like rejoinders against intrusive speech directly evokes the antirrhetic method as a defense of compunctive interiority.
, Penthos: The Doctrine of Compunction in the Christian East, 1944thesis
the confrontation with the unconscious must be a manysided one, for the transcendent function is not a partial process running a conditioned course; it is a total and integral event
Jung’s insistence that confrontation with the unconscious must be total and not merely aesthetic or intellectual parallels the ascetic logic of antirrhesis, which demands active, embodied counter-speech rather than passive avoidance.
, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960supporting
The confrontation of the two positions generates a tension charged with energy and creates a living, third thing — not a logical stillbirth in accordance with the principle tertium non datur but a movement out of the suspension between opposites
The transcendent function’s emergence from the confrontation of opposing psychic positions structurally mirrors the antirrhetic dynamic, where the practitioner’s counter-position against a tempting thought produces a transformed psychic state.
, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960supporting
The method of ‘active imagination,’ hereinafter described, is the most important auxiliary for the production of those contents of the unconscious which lie, as it were, immediately below the threshold of consciousness
Active imagination, as Jung’s primary technique for engaging unconscious contents, represents the depth-psychological functional analogue to antirrhesis in that both require the practitioner to meet autonomous inner voices with a deliberate, willed response.
, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960supporting
mediates the transcendent function for the patient, i.e., helps him to bring conscious and unconscious together and so arrive at a new attitude
The analyst’s mediating role in facilitating the transcendent function echoes the role of the spiritual father in the antirrhetic tradition, who teaches the monk to formulate effective counter-responses to intrusive thoughts.
, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960supporting
complexes can have us. The existence of complexes throws serious doubt on the naive assumption of the unity of consciousness
The complex theory’s demonstration that autonomous psychic contents can overwhelm the ego provides the depth-psychological framework within which antirrhesis — as a practice of ego-assertion against intrusive forces — acquires psychological intelligibility.
, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960aside