Conferences

Name: Conferences
Author: John Cassian

Conferences is a work by John Cassian (426).

Core claims

Cassian’s Conferences is the earliest systematic psychology of the inner life in Western literature, mapping the mechanics of self-deception, attentional hijacking, and affective regulation with a precision that anticipates depth psychology by fifteen centuries.
The concept of puritas cordis (purity of heart) functions not as a moral platitude but as a phenomenological description of ego-transparency — the condition in which unconscious compulsions no longer distort perception, making it the operative ancestor of both Jungian individuation and psychoanalytic working-through.
Cassian’s insistence that the solitary monk who refuses guidance inevitably falls into catastrophic inflation (the story of Hero) constitutes the earliest clinical account of what Edinger would later call ego-Self confusion — the psyche’s tendency to mistake its own intensity for divine authorization.

How does Cassian’s account of Hero’s fatal inflation in Conference 2 compare structurally to Edinger’s theory of ego-Self identity in Ego and Archetype, and does Cassian’s emphasis on relational correction anticipate object-relations critiques of Jungian interiority?
In what ways does Cassian’s translation of Evagrius’s apatheia into puritas cordis parallel Jung’s transformation of Freudian libido theory into a broader energic model — and what is lost or gained in each act of creative mistranslation?
How does Cassian’s concept of merike (partial perfection) in Conference 11 challenge James Hillman’s critique of the monotheistic ego in Re-Visioning Psychology, given that Cassian himself insists perfection is always plural and perspectival?