Anton Boisen Resurrected: Prophetic Vision and the Hermeneutical Treatment of Psychosis

Anton Boisen (1876-1965) was a pioneering figure in the psychology of religion and pastoral psychology, yet scholars have largely overlooked his most important theoretical contributions. His unique corpus emerged from his own experience of psychosis in 1920 and his subsequent incarceration in the psychiatric system. I argued in an earlier article that Boisen was a prophet, ahead of his time, and that the scholarly consensus is only beginning to catch up to him. In this article, after summarizing four aspects of Boisen's prophetic vision, I concentrate on what is likely his most significant and most overlooked theoretical contribution: the hermeneutical treatment of psychosis. During his 1920 episode, Boisen sensed that his visions were attempting to describe the conflicts within his own psyche and point toward a cure. With this intuition, he was independently replicating certain ideas of both Sigmund Freud and C. G. Jung. In fact, Boisen's visions have at their core a Jungian mandala, the "Family of Four," which is notable because his visions preceded his encounter with Jung's work. While Boisen intuited the significance of his own visions, he was never able to fully interpret their meaning. The article ends with an interpretation of Boisen's visions, as a case study in the hermeneutical treatment of psychosis.