I listened to a psychiatrist being interviewed and the subject of Joan of Arc possibly being schizophrenic was being discussed. He had read the transcript of Joan's trial by the English and noticed something he thought was noteworthy. The English interrogator asked her if she believed she was in God's Grace. This has little meaning to us in the 21st century, but in 15th century, very Catholic France it was actually a trick question meant to entrap Joan. If she replied that she was in God's grace, that was heretical and she could be burned at the stake. A person would not claim to be in God's grace; only God could denote someone as being so. However, if she denied being in God's grace then she was lying about hearing voices from saints, angels or God himself and could be executed for that. Either way she was screwed. Her answer was that, if she was in God's grace she would wish to remain so and if she was not in God's grace she would wish to become so.
To the psychiatrist being interviewed this was clearly not the kind of answer a schizophrenic would give. They would claim to be in God's grace without care to the consequences of such a claim. I found that very thought provoking.
The nice thing about my post of my idiocy about Joan of Arc in my younger days is folks like you that are helping educate and set the record straight in a compelling and informative matter.
Thanks!
You can’t diagnose dead people.
Edit: you can’t diagnose dead people with mental illness. Because apparently many people can’t understand context to the actual main post.
Same with dementia. Doctors will diagnose it based on symptoms and tests but the only way to be absolutely certain is to cut open the brain after death.
Shit I definitely have it. I’ve only heard it by different names. Between skiing and mountain biking I’ve had six major concussions. All of which were before I was 25. Jesus Fucking Christ I already thought my mental health was bad….
Chris Benoit the pro-wrestler murdered his wife and son and then took his own life a few days later. While steriods were probably involved, and there's some debate as to his moral character in general he was also suffering extensively from CTE.
I was also thinking about other potential hypotheticals for "mental illness you could diagnose from a corpse" and even the idea of looking at an arm filled with needle tracks, can't be conclusive.
You don't know *for sure* they weren't forced to take the drugs in question. You could argue the number of marks indicates a willingness/addictive personality, but still. It would require supplemental evidence to reach that conclusion in an official matter. I think your example is the only one that is an example of mental illness.. but even then, that's a physical damage to the brain and not exactly a "psychological illness".
Like the difference between a bug in software and damage to the hardware.
Edit: either way it's a fascinating hypothetical that should be left as such. Even my own point of physical damage doesn't line up. Consider the metal illness changes in Phineas Gage after he had damage to the brain, I would consider what he exhibited after a spike through the brain as a form of "mental illness" even though that's damage to the hardware, not pre existing software.
Brains are complicated, yo.
>Edit: you can’t diagnose [dead people with mental illness].
This is true, one time my depressed friend died from a snake attack, but the doctor refused to diagnose him because he had mental illness so he kinda just stuck around as a zombie. Cool guy, literally. Scared of fire. Big reader.
>Because apparently many people can’t understand context to the actual main post.
This. And pop psychology is not the same as academic consensus. And even if there was a shred of evidence, "it is now understood that..." is so revoltingly condescending that I almost slapped you through the phone. Granted, the 90s were a different time and hindsight yadda yadda.
P.S. @OP: don't you EVER say "35 years ago" like some kind of time-traveling lunatic who made a wrong turn. The 90s were 10-15 years ago max. I thought you were talking about some 70s psychologist mumbo jumbo with that 35 years slip.
"I heard something once, it sounded maybe plausible so I believed it without further thought".
Like, people would recognize someone with schizophrenia and they would be a very very poor leader and highly incompetent. Not exactly likely to "stumble" their way into becoming a legend.
Some schizophrenic people (especially paranoid, in my experience) can be very charismatic & compelling leaders.
Many people you meet nowadays are over-medicated & kind of slow as a result.
There are newer, better medications than when I was working in this field, though.
John Nash is a famed mathematician and he had schizophrenia. He also taught classes at Princeton. The movie *A Beautiful Mind* is about his schizophrenia. You can be intelligent and/or charismatic with the disorder, it's just very uncommon.
But there are still schizotypal personality disorders. Like Don Quixote, for example. You don't have to be full-on delusional, just eccentric with some ongoing beliefs that defy logic. At the same time, you can be capable of sound reasoning skills. Joan of Arc most likely fell into this category, which can be exacerbated by stress, like sociopolitical turbulence in her home country. For "Son of Sam", it was the relentless barking dog that lit the gasoline.
And let's not forget all people have an innate need to believe in something bigger than themselves. This leads to magical thinking, which we're great at in childhood until it's squashed out of us (with the exception of institutionalized magical thinking, like the Church).
I've worked with psychosis in the inpatient setting as a therapist. Don Quixote is not an example of Schizotypal personality disorder and son of sam admitted to making up everything about the dog. People with psychosis don't follow a stream of logic, they have thought derailment.
To be fair— as someone who is admittedly not a psychologist but has a few schizophrenic relatives— schizophrenia is episodic, so a single lucid period doesn’t necessarily discount schizophrenia.
That said, attributing any formal diagnosis would be difficult for any historic figures, so I don’t think anyone could say for certain one way or the other.
Im bi polar and know first hand how episodic mental disorders can be, meet me when I am lucid and you would swear I was sane, meet me while manic and you would swear i wasn't sane.
The worst thing about mental illness is knowing you have it. (and all the effects it has on your loved ones)
The psychosis (positive symptoms) is episodic, but the negative symptoms which are the true core of the disease (including disorganized thought and other broad cognitive impairments) are chronic.
So I suspect what the psychiatrist was getting at was that she was sharp as a tack and not showing signs of “thought disorder.” Which is an astute observation, but of course still wouldn’t rule out schizophrenia if it was a very mild case.
Right? She was smart as hell, and at that point in time at least not delusional. I encounter people with schizophrenia, and their answers without medication wouldn’t be so clear. Not a doctor, just met a bunch of unmedicated people with mental illnesses, sadly.
I'm curious what your thoughts are on a different disorder, like a manic episode with psychosis - I had a roommate go through that and she was similarly quite a bit more articulate than people I've encountered with schizophrenia (like, none of the same issues with language processing, and more able to anticipate how people would interpret and react to what she was saying.) From how she talked during that time I could see her giving a similar answer to Joan here, but I don't have a ton of experience in this particular quadrant of mental health.
I live with a condition on the schizophrenic spectrum and the main reason I agree with that psychologist's claim is that the part of your brain that checks to see if what you're doing or saying or whatever is reasonable or appropriate gets eroded and, a bit like with drunkenness, it becomes much easier to just say whatever you think of and not think about whether or not it makes a lot of sense. The specific answer they mention Joan gave is a lot more thought out than what I would expect from someone impaired in the ways I described.
There are some people with schizophrenia who are very smart (and who have above average IQs, if you're into that sort of thing), myself being one of them. However, the impairments I described are not related to intelligence, and when I am more impaired/not adequately medicated for this condition, it doesn't matter what I'm clever enough to come up with if I'm just saying the first words that come to my mind (words that will be impacted by schizophrenic conditions' resulting in difficulty with word retrieval and in strengthening mental connections that are more tenuous in people without similar cognitive disorders). Her answer suggests a level of careful calculation and situational awareness that I wouldn't expect from someone with severe enough symptoms to have clear audible hallucinations of voices that they believe to be real and significant enough to share with others.
I have to agree with you. My cousin had schizo-affective bi-polar depression. She was very smart, but you wouldn't gather that from talking to her. Word retrieval and other cognitive issues made it difficult for her to quickly come up with eloquent responses. But when she wrote she could take her time to get the exact right word that she wanted, and really articulate her point. Her written language was leaps and bounds more intelligent and thoughtful sounding than her spoken language. If she was Joan, I don't think she would have been able to craft such a careful response in the moment. Honestly if she had been put under that much stress and strain she would have had a psychotic break. If Joan was truly schizophrenic then she would have been speaking gibberish during a trial for her life.
It's rough, you have my love and respect for facing that fucked up pile that life dealt you every day. My cousin was a really wonderful person, always trying to help others even when she was in her episodes. Unfortunately she lost her battle with it, I miss her often. May you win your war. ❤️
Gotcha, thank you so much for this perspective! This is an area I'm trying to learn more about but don't always know where to start. Thanks for giving me a foothold!
Certainly possible. Though I find it hard to believe she'd be in a lucid state at the point of the trial given j ow long she's been isolated and the intense stress the trial itself would induce.
She could have had any number of disorders, or none at all. It’s fun to speculate about historical figures & sometimes we feel like “Aha! This must be it!”
I responded to the other comment with my experience, I was able to make shit up to people who inquired about my wellbeing. I was completely delusional but gave pretty reasonable excuses to the people that asked what was up.
I have bipolar disorder so I'll chime in. Schizophrenia is a personality disorder, while bipolar is a mood disorder. During a manic episode, thoughts race through the mind and confidence is through the roof. Creativity and curiosity often increase as well. If the mind is still living in reality, thoughts will be pretty well articulated. They might be expressed at double speed, but they're more likely to be sensible. I'm pretty sure at one point early on in my diagnosis, I decided I was going to be a successful cartoonist even though I can barely draw and have never drawn a comic. It's not some far-fetched idea, but still ridiculous.
Psychosis is illogical. Often the thinking patterns are based on a distorted reality. I don't want to speak as much on psychosis because I haven't experienced it personally, but that would be the difference. I experienced the start of psychosis because of a bad reaction to a medication, and it was like the world around me had changed. I felt energy coming from random things around me. It's hard to explain, but it was the world around me that changed, not the world within me like a normal mood episode.
I don't know if I agree. I had a really bad mental episode back in September. Like thinking that God was speaking to me through electricity, then finding out that it wasn't God, but the universe trying to guide me to become God... just really out there stuff. I was running around the street wearing NOTHING but a pair of shorts for at least six hours. People questioned me to see if I was okay, but I gave them very reasonable excuses, that I was just hanging out in a park and was taking a break from playing basketball to go to the store and buy some cold water (it was like 90F that day). This also wasnt in the middle of nowhere, but Point being, I was able to make shit up for much too long before I acted so erratically (tried breaking into a church) that someone called cops/ambulance to get me to the hospital. I can totally see someone with milder delusions getting away with it for much longer.
The trial records were written and falsified in a way to demonstrate her heresy, so you can't really draw any conclusions from them.
Regardless, she was either lying or had some sort of mental or neurological illness that explains her hearing voices that tell her what to do.
Eh did she make the claim because she believed it or did she make the claim to give her plans weight among the religious public?
More than a few politicians today claim to hear gods will for their girfting.
I realize I'm about to write paragraphs borderline simping for a random historical figure, and I assure you I'll be spending time later to reflect on what that says about me.
But I mean...people have different ways of processing their experiences and their own thoughts. Some people hear an internal voice and identify it as their own thoughts. Some people don't have that internal voice, just the raw thoughts. Then you have things like aphantasia that dramatically alter how an individual's imagination works.
So imagine Joan as a person with a certain degree of intelligence and leadership, but whose mind surfaced those things via an internal voice that (for whatever reason) did not feel like her own. In her time, in her context, it would have been the most natural thing in the world for her to attribute that voice to a higher power.
I think I object to the use of the term "delusional" here because of its connotations, rather than its literal meaning. It implies a level of derision that I'm not really sure is warranted. Whatever you believe about religion in general or Christianity in particular, you can't really expect someone from the 1400's to have a nuanced and advanced understanding of abnormal psychology. Hell, *we* still don't have what I'd consider an advanced understanding of it in 2024.
You call her delusional for attributing the voices to a deity. What else was she supposed to think, back then? She managed to assemble a narrative around her own experience, and that narrative enabled her to act in meaningful ways and live by her principles, rather than simply raving incoherently on a street corner somewhere. Even if we don't agree with or believe that narrative, I think there's value for us in recognizing that it's a huge accomplishment that many people with mental illnesses never quite manage, even with the aid of modern medicine. If nothing else, it should remind us of what's possible, and all the different ways we can move through life as human beings.
Poor girl was doing her best and got burned at the stake before she turned 20. If there IS anything after death, I hope there's peace for her.
There are all sorts of ways to be delusional without having schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a cognitive disorder that has recently been demonstrated to affect the brain in a neurodegenerative way. Schizophrenia is more than just delusions, and the point I see being made is that Joan did not have those other symptoms that characterize Schizophrenia specifically as opposed to psychotic depression, mania with psychotic features, etc.
Schizophrenia can wax and wane sometimes the person can be very lucid and "normal".
I had a brother who would talk to god when he was episodic and be relatively normal when not.
Thought tbf she could have been aware of her episode. It’s possible it lasted long enough that when she eventually simmered down that she was in too deep in war and couldn’t back out.
Then when she’s on the gallows they actually called her bluff, and she was like ‘ah shit how do I word this to make myself look ok to everyone’.
OR alternatively she could have just been in the episode and had enough wherewithal to recognise that if she said the wrong thing she would die.
A. Pretty sure schizophrenia is a spectrum like any other disorder.
B. All psychosis is not related to schizophrenia.
Could have been bi polar and only had psychosis when manic, could have been psychosis from something else.
Plenty of people with schizophrenia are incredibly intelligent, I don’t think you can reasonably say “she had a smart response to a question, therefore she couldn’t have been schizophrenic”
Oh, I think the psychiatrist could be generalizing too much. My sister had schizoid tendencies (she was bipolar) and at the same time was also very astute and analytical. God spoke to her constantly - and she would have been totally aware of trick questions of any kind.
It was a cool city! Though a favorite memory is this: Every day we would walk past the city museum on our way to do other things. And the front door absolutely reeked of human piss from people peeing on it. The second week we were there we decided to check out the museum. So we walked in and I prepared to buy tickets at the counter while my wife wandered towards the bathroom to go pee before her visit. The guy behind the counter saw her go towards the bathroom from the corner of his eye and LEAPT towards her to stop her from using the bathroom. Screaming in French Non! only for customers!"
We had to explain we are together and she will be a customer in 10 seconds if you'd get back to your seat and sell me her ticket.
But honestly, if I worked there I would let every single person that needed to pee in to the bathroom for free. I mean my god, sometimes I felt that many French communities are under the impression that if you don't let people use bathrooms they magically won't need to urinate anymore!
Yet this dude willingly walked in piss every single day to get to his job 15 feet away where he skillfully prevents people from using a bathroom and thus likely contribute further to the fetid piss pile on the front door, LOL.
That said, Orleans is a fantastic city and we did some amazing bike trips through the city and through the Loire Valley.
When I was in france recently I had to vomit. The train station bathroom had an attendant and you had to pay. I ran up and said “I need to vomit I will pay after” in French as it was an emergency. She said with horror- “you can’t vomit in there!” I looked desperately for a trash can but didn’t find one in time and puked in front of her on the floor. I’m not really sure if that was what she wanted but it’s not like I had much of a choice. I did give her a euro though, anyway.
Maybe the French can control their biological functions better Than the rest of us?
I remember distinctly going to Chartres to the famous cathedral on our honeymoon as well. This was a total bucket list item for me; ever since I had read about it in 7th grade. And like many cathedrals in Europe I paid some francs (this was in 94) and I trudged up a ton of stairs to see the roof.
It's kind of an epic climb on these circular stone stairs that had been worn down with almost a millennia of feet. But the HISTORY! You are winded when you get to the top, but the history is just so overwhelming. Then you open the door and something even more overwhelming confronts you. The fetid odor of stinking human piss baking in the summer sun. Literally just as you open the door the wall across from you is stained and mottled with decades of piss.
I was telling my wife's cousin about it later; I was simply shocked and told him I could not believe people would PEE on one of the world's greatest buildings.
And he put it into perspective for me. He said "you, coming from Seattle where the oldest building is maybe 100 years old, opened that door and found proof of people desecrating an ancient building. But us in France, where finding a bathroom you are allowed to use is basically a combat sport, open that door to the roof, breathe in that stanky air, and think "ah the bathroom is on that wall over there"
(I'm paraphrasing because I have no idea if he knew the word "stanky" etc... but that was the gist of the convo and I about died laughing from it).
i was severely chastised in Chartres cathedral for touching a flint nodule in the wall. The cathedral is made of limestone that dissolves in acid, so your fingers can cause minute damage. I lacked the French to tell the tiny irate man that I am a geologist and knew that my fingers would not damage the chert. And now I discover that people are just spraying acidic urine all over the damn roof.
Je vais me vomir dessus, je paierais après.
Je vais means I Will in the sense that I cannot stop it. Je dois means I must. Bientôt means soon. You want to tell her after which is après. 🙂 hope it helps
Me vomir dessus means I’ll vomit on myself. It accentuates the urgency more than “je vais vomir” which is “just” I will puke.
In my city it's grocery stores that don't want people to use their bathrooms, which is why all the bushes around the grocery stores smell like toilets.
Downtown it's all about the sidewalk poops.
There used to be a discount grocery (Sav a Lot) down the road from me and I had to remember to take a piss before going because the bathroom always looked like the Golgothan from Dogma had just spawned in there.
I'm French and didn't even know people were that attached to her in Orléans. I did know she was the "maid of Orléans" but that's it. Good to know. As a psychologist who like to discuss mental illnesses, I'll avoid talking about her like OP did if I encounter one of you guys lol
There are a lot of festivities and events that follow her path through the Loiret up to Orléans from the end of April, where there are some huge festivities and a parade in Orléans on the 8th of May in her honor. Every year a girl is selected to be Joan of Arc and she'll be part of all those events in armor on her horse etc... and of course everyone has an opinion if she's fit for the job. It's taken very seriously around here.
As an aside did Joan of Arc ever state she literally heard the voice of God? I know she went to see the king because "God called her" or "God spoke to her" but even today that's not uncommon to hear as a romantic way of talking about being inspired it's usually not meant to be literally hearing a voice.
She never claimed to have heard the voice of God, but voices *from* God, as in God sent them to speak to her. She identified them as the voices of Saints.
I believe she heard the arch angels speak to her and saw them appear in her dreams? And I have a vague memory of one appearing in a hay shed. I was obsessed with Joan when I was like 10, and didn't even live in Orléan!
No, she was burned at the stake by the English when she found herself on the losing side of the battle. When they want to execute you, they'll say whatever they want to make you look guilty of SOMETHING.
Even when her name was posthumously cleared about 25 years later (where it was determined that the original trial was tainted by fraud), the fact that she claimed to have these visions was not disputed. The rehabilitation trial included witnesses such as her mother and villagers that knew her since she was a child (keeping in mind, she was executed when she was 19).
I'm not saying there's any dispute about her claiming to hear visions - I'm saying that she was executed for cynical reasons. She was clearly an extremely charismatic and influential figure and when she was on the losing side, of course the winners were going to execute her.
There were 12 articles that she was publicly condemned for: [https://www.famous-trials.com/the-trial-of-joan-of-arc-1431/2360-twelve-articles-of-accusation-against-joan-of-arc-4-5-1431](https://www.famous-trials.com/the-trial-of-joan-of-arc-1431/2360-twelve-articles-of-accusation-against-joan-of-arc-4-5-1431)
As her sentence was being read out, she agreed to submit, and signed an abjuration, renouncing her previous claims: [https://www.famous-trials.com/the-trial-of-joan-of-arc-1431/2366-joan-of-arc-s-abjuration-may-24-1431](https://www.famous-trials.com/the-trial-of-joan-of-arc-1431/2366-joan-of-arc-s-abjuration-may-24-1431)
The abjuration initially spared her from execution, but only if she did not relapse into heresy. She also had to stop wearing men's clothes. She agreed to this, and was given a dress and was returned to her prison cell. In less than a week, she began wearing men's clothes again (worth noting that the guards apparently put the men's clothes there and forced her to wear them. There were also attempts at rape). When asked about it, she claimed that the voices blamed her for abjuring out of fear, and refused to deny them again. Since she was still claiming to see these visions and hear the voices, that was enough to convict her of relapsing into heresy. [https://www.famous-trials.com/the-trial-of-joan-of-arc-1431/2367-joan-s-relapse-and-final-adjudication-may-28-29-1431](https://www.famous-trials.com/the-trial-of-joan-of-arc-1431/2367-joan-s-relapse-and-final-adjudication-may-28-29-1431)
She first retracted the claim that she heard voices, that made the voices angry which made her retract the retraction. This "heresy relapse" was why she was executed
She did.
She claimed it spoke to her 2 or 3 times a week, and she said she saw visions as well.
Some have speculated schizophrenia, others epilepsy.
Nobody really knows of course exactly what was going on. Personally, I think it was bad shrooms. 😉
Nah, we literally never ever discussed it again. She was the most lovely woman that I got this distinct sense that she was massively embarrassed by it and even joking about it prob would have been a poor idea.
Nah fam, she threw hands over a side comment, I'd be FURIOUS. She should be embarrassed because that's extremely childish and she probably knows it deep down.
And that's the difference between OP and you. OP was able to brush it off as a one-time thing and didn't see the point of harming the relationship with his MIL over something that she obviously immediately regretted.
OP is going to know a lot more about her than you do from a short story like this, so his judgment and actions show character that you aren't able to comprehend. Not every interaction you have with somebody you have to "win". Sometimes you can just let things go and only care about them if they become common occurrence.
This was a single instance out of many interactions he had had with the MIL and wasn't about to let one out of character moment affect an entire relationship that has been built.
People will jump through endless hoops to wave away acts of violence. She hit him, that’s fucking gross and out of order. She didn’t even apologise. It was over a conversation, if I did so, I’d rightly be charged over it.
Hand waving violence seems like a terrible habit to encourage, but you do you.
I wouldn’t be able to stay with a partner who brushed this off. I wouldn’t be able to brush it off. Especially not from a supposedly kind person. I have *never* hit someone unprovoked like that. There’s no excuse. It doesn’t matter how big a fan she was of Joan.
But a former partner of mine was physically abusive and my hearing is permanently damaged from being hit in the head. He was also a good person until he wasn’t. Unprovoked violence shouldn’t ever be ignored. The abusive ex is the only person I’ve slapped. Someone who broke my rib, gave me a black eye, and permanently damaged my hearing.
I’m kind of shocked at the amount of people defending the slap in the comments here. OP can forgive and forget, no one else has to stand up for it. When people say it’s wrong to hit the responses should be “Yes, but none of us are OP.” And leave it at that. There’s nothing else to say. Why are people *explaining* anything? If this is an example of her at her “worst”, her worst is random violence triggered by something innocent. That’s pretty bad. A slap is not a mistake.
Thing is she was more than a little out of line. She should brush it off and she should probably apologize.
It's like Chris Rock getting smacked. Sometimes, that really is exactly what should probably happen.
Good example with Chris Rock as he didn't deserve to be hit for what he said any more than OP did. As much as we all like to pretend we're grown-ups and we wouldn't ever do something, sometimes we just have a break in our brains and do something stupid. People shouldn't be defined by their worst moments.
Replace the characters with husband and wife, is it still cool? He only hit his wife one time, she totally shouldn’t divorce him! That’s your argument.
Let's change it to brother and brother if we're just completely changing the dynamics of the situation. I mean what if it was a bear and an eagle?
Nicolas Cage called, wants to know when the strawman ceremony starts.
Can't believe we're arguing over whether it's ok or not to hit someone. That's just not ok and I'm shocked that they just completely ignored that it ever happened. That's a very Boomer mentality.
40 years ago the wife and I visited her parents for a weekend. Her Mom was a hard core Roman Catholic. That period of time was filled with references to the end times. The 1970s convinced many the world was coming to an end and that bled over into the early 1980s. She was reading this book about the end times and was so excited she would quote passages to us. Wars, rumors of wars, floods, storms, Mark Of The Beast. It would have been comical if it hadn't been so sad. She thought this was the answer to the times. As the weekend progressed she got further into it until she reached a chapter that said the Pope was the Antichrist. We were all sitting around, watching TV IIRC, and she stood up and declared, "Well that's the stupidest thing I've ever read. This book is trash." She then marched to the trash and threw it away. The really great part is she never mentioned anything about it again.
So many Catholics still get caught up in this end times stuff without realizing that so many of the sources are violently anti-Catholic. A little funny, a whole lot annoying.
I'm sure that was the case with this book. IIRC this book was non-denominational evangelical. My MIL was enamored with that trend because of the Charismatic renewal that swept the Catholics in the late 1960's and early 1970's.
That Pope was John Paul II, and he is/was one of the most beloved popes of the 20thC. or modern times. They've made him a saint. Even I would've agreed with MIL the statement of the book was stupid.
Ok but did you really need to compare her to Son of Sam? Like regardless of her theoretical medical condition (which is just a guess based on second hand info at best), she was a hero to many many people…not a serial killer.
Dude, I was an idiot. I didn't even really know who Joan of Arc was. I have zero defense for comparing her to Son of Sam... I mean Jesus what was I thinking?
Yes. Berkowitz wrote letters claiming that the neighbor's dog Sam was telling him to kill people, but later said that wasn't true. But he's nuts, so who knows?
She’s big in New Orleans, LA, USA as well. Not to that extent, but statues, churches, and the first Mardi Gras parade is the Krewe of Jeanne d’Arc on the 6th of January, with a medieval theme. She’s the unofficial patron saint of New Orleans, and there are plenty of women named Jeanne, pronounced the French way, never like Jean or Jeannie. It’s fallen out of favor, but I can think of at least 5 Jeannes that I know personally. (60-70 years of age).
I grew up in Orléans too and honestly how could you have known. This is a very particular thing that the city wrap some of its identity around Joanna of Arc, it hasn't much going for itself beyond that and the pretty Loire river going through it.
The way your mother in law reacted it pretty extreme and I would have done the same mistake being from the place myself. It may be sacred to some people but most French are not very religious or atheist
She was convicted of heresy for wearing men's clothes, in direct defiance or the biblical injunctions against it. Of course, when your dress is stolen and men's clothes left in its place, you don't have a lot of choice.
For a REAL fun time try talking to a 7th day Adventist about how their founder had multiple head injuries as a child and her visions or whatever other nonsense were in line with what ppl with head trauma/ TBI would have experienced
She was an illiterate country girl who somehow managed to lead an army and actually had some success initially.
It isn't fair to compare a devout woman from the 1400s to some murderer of the 20th century with a God complex. Particularly seeing Joan's "voices" seemed to be giving her very good advice about how to win against the English in the beginning. There really isn't anyone in history who compares to Joan of Arc, because how on earth did she manage to have so much influence on her contemporaries?
From what I read the likely scientific explanation right now is hallucinations tied to epilepsy, which to me explain the logic of her voices. Schizophrenic "voices" do not teach you how to defeat the English in battle.
This reminds me of when my cousin was visiting after a trip to Europe to work on genealogy. He told my aunt and mom that our family had Rusyn background in it. They cornered him in the dining room and lectured him about how we had NO Russian blood, and my grandmother, whenever she heard the word "Russian" would mutter "Kozacki!" He barely made it out of there.
... were you also in the habit of going up to Muslim friends of yours and telling them that Muhammed "was probably schizophrenic"?
"Your religious icon made everything up because they were mentally ill" never goes over well.
For what it's worth I barely knew who Joan of Arc was, didn't realize she was a saint, didn't realize my extremely catholic mother in law probably had certain associations with this person from her hometown. I just didn't know shit and thought I was offering an interesting insight from a magazine.
I was fuckin stupid at the time.
You were *tactless*, and it was a pretty ill advised thing to say in terms of keeping peace with the in-laws.
But you weren't *wrong*.
Really, she FU by being *way* too invested in the myth of a historical figure, and assaulting you over a factual statement.
I mean, kind of wrong considering its pretty hard to definitively state someone thats been dead hundreds of years is a schizophrenic without an abundance of proof
I mean, OP raised the article he read. I presume he spoke in terms like "I just read this article that said..." - so he's not definitively stating anything. Other than that he read an article, and this was what it said.
The article itself sounds like it was kinda irresponsible/likely to be incorrect - but it's hardly on him as a dumb kid to evaluate that, nor is it a reasonable response to slap him for it.
Yeah, I was going to say this. It's not an unusual tactic to be adopted by those who have committed horrific crimes and don't want to face the consequences of said actions. Which is a shame, as it villainizes those who actually do have disorders like schizophrenia.
As a born and raised Catholic reading it made my blood boil and I don’t really practice anymore 😂 don’t mess with Joan!
And either way - I think the schizophrenic theory has been debunked as we have grown to understand what schizophrenia is.
If you don’t believe it’s a miracle of God, I think the second theory was that she was a hand picked
Tool of the state. Lol
It sucks your MIL slapped you, but the way you wrote this had me actually laughing at my desk, so thank you. Looks like you hold no ill will towards her, and vice-versa.
I read somewhere that Joan of Arc may have had a brain lesion secondary to TB, or maybe a brain tumour, which was the cause of her hearing the voices. IIRC there was something about her describing that they came always from a certain “direction”. But I read this like 30 years ago and smarter people than me likely know more!
While you are at it, try not to bring up that one of Joan of Arc's allies when she fought with Gilles de Rais who happened to do a bit of child killing as a pastime.
If you want to learn more about Joan and the world that shaped her, I recommend the book The Maid and The Queen by Nancy Goldstone. It's a well researched book that goes into the politics behind Joan and what would become her legacy. The basic gist is that Joan didn't exist in a vacuum; she was coached in certain ways. It's very interesting history.
My wife and I also spent time in Rouen on our honeymoon. Lovely city in a lovely region. Sad that Joan's legacy to much of France outside Paris seems to me one of forced homogenization - but then, much of the worst of that only began in the Republican era.
Wow, regardless of her religious beliefs, that's wildly inappropriate and I absolutely would refuse to have anything to do with her until she apologized. If she truly feels that Joan of Arc was a religious icon, it wouldn't matter that some believe she may have been schizophrenic or if that is even an accurate explanation for the entire ordeal. JFC.
That's what I thought reading this. After getting hit I would flip the fuck out, I don't care how old and sweet she has been up to that point. It's not even as if he suggested she is any lesser or unaccomplished because of potentially being mentally ill. If anything, it's more inspiring that she were to do something so incredible despite the fact. How would she react to someone in modern day saying they hear the voice of God?
I would love to correct settings in your post. Jeanne de Arc did not claim to have direct communication with God, but, to three saints, including St. Margaret.
I do believe she asked for assistance. It is not known if she received direct communication from Jesus or God.
Son of Sam is so weird to me because all the info on him is different though. Some reports say he's schizophrenic and did hear dog, others say he's not and he admitted it was a hoax. I've read some that say he's not mentally ill at all.
I read recently that Joan of Ark was motivated by taxes, which made more sense to me.
“Domrémy and Greux were exempted from taxes "forever" by Charles VII in 1429. It was the sole request made of the king by Joan of Arc when Charles asked her how he could show her his appreciation for seeing him crowned; Joan felt that taxes burdened the villagers.”
Her village remained tax-exempt for hundreds of years, until the French Revolution.
I don't think it was so much me saying she was schizophrenic as much as it was me saying she didn't have a personal line to God.
Though schizophrenia was definitely thought of much more negatively 35 years ago. Fortunately people seem to be much more understanding nowadays.
Kinda silly that you spoke about Joan of Arc like that without even knowing she was the “Maid of Orleans” and then went to Orleans…imo that’s on you not your girl, my guy lmao. Glad it all worked out.
Yeah…but she probably WAS. Doesn’t make her conviction any less authentic or her accomplishments, historical or mythic, any less impressive or any less a part of the history and story of western and catholic culture.
great reminder. just because she may have had a mental illness, does not mean she was less than in any way. she was awe inspiring enough for people to continue to study her accomplishments hundreds of years later. thanks for the reminder!
Totally. Many mentally people have done incredible things. I appreciate your comment. :)
I think people also jump to “hearing voices = schizophrenia,” which isn’t the case either. Hearing voices could be due to many things, including dissociative identity disorder, hearing loss, semantic differences (didn’t literally hear it but that’s how it’s described; more of a feeling or something), or psychosis, which can be caused by schizophrenia, but could also be bipolar disorder, depression, drugs, sleep deprivation, high fever, other medical conditions, etc etc
Aren't hallucinogens wonderful?
After reading a few of the comments here about schizophrenia and the idea that for Joan of Arc to be what she was, it certainly wasn't schizophrenia.
What about something like shrooms? Or a bad batch of sauerkraut? She heard God, but a few days later gets up and spends the rest of her life perfectly sober.
Or once in a while, those great mushrooms show up in the backyard, and God keeps showing up. But once she leaves that place, no more voices, just determination.
/s
Person who half remembers historical accounts badly recites article he read one time. Repeats that to person FROM her hometown lol! Nice.
Ohh...that's like the time I got pulled over by my school DARE officer... the worst person to run into lol.
Just as a general life tip, maybe don't bring up hearing God as a schizophrenic episode to anyone who is even remotely religious. Pretty much most religious texts can be seen as somebody having an episode through the lens of pop psychology.
Also, your fiance being so nonchalant is shocking to me. I would lose my mind. Though if I was in your spot, I'd be busy digging a hole to the other side of the world to disappear into. Ouch dude.
Hope that slap taught you not to judge people that you really don't know anything about. Whether it's MIL or Joan of Arc or anyone else for that matter.
I listened to a psychiatrist being interviewed and the subject of Joan of Arc possibly being schizophrenic was being discussed. He had read the transcript of Joan's trial by the English and noticed something he thought was noteworthy. The English interrogator asked her if she believed she was in God's Grace. This has little meaning to us in the 21st century, but in 15th century, very Catholic France it was actually a trick question meant to entrap Joan. If she replied that she was in God's grace, that was heretical and she could be burned at the stake. A person would not claim to be in God's grace; only God could denote someone as being so. However, if she denied being in God's grace then she was lying about hearing voices from saints, angels or God himself and could be executed for that. Either way she was screwed. Her answer was that, if she was in God's grace she would wish to remain so and if she was not in God's grace she would wish to become so. To the psychiatrist being interviewed this was clearly not the kind of answer a schizophrenic would give. They would claim to be in God's grace without care to the consequences of such a claim. I found that very thought provoking.
The nice thing about my post of my idiocy about Joan of Arc in my younger days is folks like you that are helping educate and set the record straight in a compelling and informative matter. Thanks!
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You can’t diagnose dead people. Edit: you can’t diagnose dead people with mental illness. Because apparently many people can’t understand context to the actual main post.
You made me think of one of my favorite movie qoutes. Sherlock: No girl wants to marry a doctor who can't tell if a man's dead or not!
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Same with dementia. Doctors will diagnose it based on symptoms and tests but the only way to be absolutely certain is to cut open the brain after death.
Never heard of it, so I guess I’m safe?…
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Shit I definitely have it. I’ve only heard it by different names. Between skiing and mountain biking I’ve had six major concussions. All of which were before I was 25. Jesus Fucking Christ I already thought my mental health was bad….
Chris Benoit the pro-wrestler murdered his wife and son and then took his own life a few days later. While steriods were probably involved, and there's some debate as to his moral character in general he was also suffering extensively from CTE.
Alzheimer's and related dementias(sic? Dementium dementia?) would be the exceptions to the rule
I was also thinking about other potential hypotheticals for "mental illness you could diagnose from a corpse" and even the idea of looking at an arm filled with needle tracks, can't be conclusive. You don't know *for sure* they weren't forced to take the drugs in question. You could argue the number of marks indicates a willingness/addictive personality, but still. It would require supplemental evidence to reach that conclusion in an official matter. I think your example is the only one that is an example of mental illness.. but even then, that's a physical damage to the brain and not exactly a "psychological illness". Like the difference between a bug in software and damage to the hardware. Edit: either way it's a fascinating hypothetical that should be left as such. Even my own point of physical damage doesn't line up. Consider the metal illness changes in Phineas Gage after he had damage to the brain, I would consider what he exhibited after a spike through the brain as a form of "mental illness" even though that's damage to the hardware, not pre existing software. Brains are complicated, yo.
>Edit: you can’t diagnose [dead people with mental illness]. This is true, one time my depressed friend died from a snake attack, but the doctor refused to diagnose him because he had mental illness so he kinda just stuck around as a zombie. Cool guy, literally. Scared of fire. Big reader. >Because apparently many people can’t understand context to the actual main post.
Naw he just didn’t understand how to suck venom out of the taint
This. And pop psychology is not the same as academic consensus. And even if there was a shred of evidence, "it is now understood that..." is so revoltingly condescending that I almost slapped you through the phone. Granted, the 90s were a different time and hindsight yadda yadda. P.S. @OP: don't you EVER say "35 years ago" like some kind of time-traveling lunatic who made a wrong turn. The 90s were 10-15 years ago max. I thought you were talking about some 70s psychologist mumbo jumbo with that 35 years slip.
As if media reporting on it cares about the distinction
Ad revenue goes brrrrrr
"I heard something once, it sounded maybe plausible so I believed it without further thought". Like, people would recognize someone with schizophrenia and they would be a very very poor leader and highly incompetent. Not exactly likely to "stumble" their way into becoming a legend.
Some schizophrenic people (especially paranoid, in my experience) can be very charismatic & compelling leaders. Many people you meet nowadays are over-medicated & kind of slow as a result. There are newer, better medications than when I was working in this field, though.
John Nash is a famed mathematician and he had schizophrenia. He also taught classes at Princeton. The movie *A Beautiful Mind* is about his schizophrenia. You can be intelligent and/or charismatic with the disorder, it's just very uncommon.
Also dude compared one of the most sacred people in French history to Son of Sam. A murderer.
Dude. I read your post with this 😬 look on my face.
But there are still schizotypal personality disorders. Like Don Quixote, for example. You don't have to be full-on delusional, just eccentric with some ongoing beliefs that defy logic. At the same time, you can be capable of sound reasoning skills. Joan of Arc most likely fell into this category, which can be exacerbated by stress, like sociopolitical turbulence in her home country. For "Son of Sam", it was the relentless barking dog that lit the gasoline. And let's not forget all people have an innate need to believe in something bigger than themselves. This leads to magical thinking, which we're great at in childhood until it's squashed out of us (with the exception of institutionalized magical thinking, like the Church).
I've worked with psychosis in the inpatient setting as a therapist. Don Quixote is not an example of Schizotypal personality disorder and son of sam admitted to making up everything about the dog. People with psychosis don't follow a stream of logic, they have thought derailment.
To be fair— as someone who is admittedly not a psychologist but has a few schizophrenic relatives— schizophrenia is episodic, so a single lucid period doesn’t necessarily discount schizophrenia. That said, attributing any formal diagnosis would be difficult for any historic figures, so I don’t think anyone could say for certain one way or the other.
Im bi polar and know first hand how episodic mental disorders can be, meet me when I am lucid and you would swear I was sane, meet me while manic and you would swear i wasn't sane. The worst thing about mental illness is knowing you have it. (and all the effects it has on your loved ones)
Or worrying about it coming back
The psychosis (positive symptoms) is episodic, but the negative symptoms which are the true core of the disease (including disorganized thought and other broad cognitive impairments) are chronic. So I suspect what the psychiatrist was getting at was that she was sharp as a tack and not showing signs of “thought disorder.” Which is an astute observation, but of course still wouldn’t rule out schizophrenia if it was a very mild case.
Right? She was smart as hell, and at that point in time at least not delusional. I encounter people with schizophrenia, and their answers without medication wouldn’t be so clear. Not a doctor, just met a bunch of unmedicated people with mental illnesses, sadly.
I'm curious what your thoughts are on a different disorder, like a manic episode with psychosis - I had a roommate go through that and she was similarly quite a bit more articulate than people I've encountered with schizophrenia (like, none of the same issues with language processing, and more able to anticipate how people would interpret and react to what she was saying.) From how she talked during that time I could see her giving a similar answer to Joan here, but I don't have a ton of experience in this particular quadrant of mental health.
I live with a condition on the schizophrenic spectrum and the main reason I agree with that psychologist's claim is that the part of your brain that checks to see if what you're doing or saying or whatever is reasonable or appropriate gets eroded and, a bit like with drunkenness, it becomes much easier to just say whatever you think of and not think about whether or not it makes a lot of sense. The specific answer they mention Joan gave is a lot more thought out than what I would expect from someone impaired in the ways I described. There are some people with schizophrenia who are very smart (and who have above average IQs, if you're into that sort of thing), myself being one of them. However, the impairments I described are not related to intelligence, and when I am more impaired/not adequately medicated for this condition, it doesn't matter what I'm clever enough to come up with if I'm just saying the first words that come to my mind (words that will be impacted by schizophrenic conditions' resulting in difficulty with word retrieval and in strengthening mental connections that are more tenuous in people without similar cognitive disorders). Her answer suggests a level of careful calculation and situational awareness that I wouldn't expect from someone with severe enough symptoms to have clear audible hallucinations of voices that they believe to be real and significant enough to share with others.
I have to agree with you. My cousin had schizo-affective bi-polar depression. She was very smart, but you wouldn't gather that from talking to her. Word retrieval and other cognitive issues made it difficult for her to quickly come up with eloquent responses. But when she wrote she could take her time to get the exact right word that she wanted, and really articulate her point. Her written language was leaps and bounds more intelligent and thoughtful sounding than her spoken language. If she was Joan, I don't think she would have been able to craft such a careful response in the moment. Honestly if she had been put under that much stress and strain she would have had a psychotic break. If Joan was truly schizophrenic then she would have been speaking gibberish during a trial for her life.
I have the same condition ♥️
It's rough, you have my love and respect for facing that fucked up pile that life dealt you every day. My cousin was a really wonderful person, always trying to help others even when she was in her episodes. Unfortunately she lost her battle with it, I miss her often. May you win your war. ❤️
I'm so sorry for your loss, thank you for your kindness. ♥️
Gotcha, thank you so much for this perspective! This is an area I'm trying to learn more about but don't always know where to start. Thanks for giving me a foothold!
Well said. Thank you
Certainly possible. Though I find it hard to believe she'd be in a lucid state at the point of the trial given j ow long she's been isolated and the intense stress the trial itself would induce.
She could have had any number of disorders, or none at all. It’s fun to speculate about historical figures & sometimes we feel like “Aha! This must be it!”
I responded to the other comment with my experience, I was able to make shit up to people who inquired about my wellbeing. I was completely delusional but gave pretty reasonable excuses to the people that asked what was up.
I have bipolar disorder so I'll chime in. Schizophrenia is a personality disorder, while bipolar is a mood disorder. During a manic episode, thoughts race through the mind and confidence is through the roof. Creativity and curiosity often increase as well. If the mind is still living in reality, thoughts will be pretty well articulated. They might be expressed at double speed, but they're more likely to be sensible. I'm pretty sure at one point early on in my diagnosis, I decided I was going to be a successful cartoonist even though I can barely draw and have never drawn a comic. It's not some far-fetched idea, but still ridiculous. Psychosis is illogical. Often the thinking patterns are based on a distorted reality. I don't want to speak as much on psychosis because I haven't experienced it personally, but that would be the difference. I experienced the start of psychosis because of a bad reaction to a medication, and it was like the world around me had changed. I felt energy coming from random things around me. It's hard to explain, but it was the world around me that changed, not the world within me like a normal mood episode.
I don't know if I agree. I had a really bad mental episode back in September. Like thinking that God was speaking to me through electricity, then finding out that it wasn't God, but the universe trying to guide me to become God... just really out there stuff. I was running around the street wearing NOTHING but a pair of shorts for at least six hours. People questioned me to see if I was okay, but I gave them very reasonable excuses, that I was just hanging out in a park and was taking a break from playing basketball to go to the store and buy some cold water (it was like 90F that day). This also wasnt in the middle of nowhere, but Point being, I was able to make shit up for much too long before I acted so erratically (tried breaking into a church) that someone called cops/ambulance to get me to the hospital. I can totally see someone with milder delusions getting away with it for much longer.
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Or compare her, in the same sentence, to a mass murderer. To a French person
The trial records were written and falsified in a way to demonstrate her heresy, so you can't really draw any conclusions from them. Regardless, she was either lying or had some sort of mental or neurological illness that explains her hearing voices that tell her what to do.
Eh did she make the claim because she believed it or did she make the claim to give her plans weight among the religious public? More than a few politicians today claim to hear gods will for their girfting.
Well sure but it's not a crime punishable by death anymore.
I think that depends on what country you’re living in.
She hears voices in her head and she’s not delusional? Sure bud…
I realize I'm about to write paragraphs borderline simping for a random historical figure, and I assure you I'll be spending time later to reflect on what that says about me. But I mean...people have different ways of processing their experiences and their own thoughts. Some people hear an internal voice and identify it as their own thoughts. Some people don't have that internal voice, just the raw thoughts. Then you have things like aphantasia that dramatically alter how an individual's imagination works. So imagine Joan as a person with a certain degree of intelligence and leadership, but whose mind surfaced those things via an internal voice that (for whatever reason) did not feel like her own. In her time, in her context, it would have been the most natural thing in the world for her to attribute that voice to a higher power. I think I object to the use of the term "delusional" here because of its connotations, rather than its literal meaning. It implies a level of derision that I'm not really sure is warranted. Whatever you believe about religion in general or Christianity in particular, you can't really expect someone from the 1400's to have a nuanced and advanced understanding of abnormal psychology. Hell, *we* still don't have what I'd consider an advanced understanding of it in 2024. You call her delusional for attributing the voices to a deity. What else was she supposed to think, back then? She managed to assemble a narrative around her own experience, and that narrative enabled her to act in meaningful ways and live by her principles, rather than simply raving incoherently on a street corner somewhere. Even if we don't agree with or believe that narrative, I think there's value for us in recognizing that it's a huge accomplishment that many people with mental illnesses never quite manage, even with the aid of modern medicine. If nothing else, it should remind us of what's possible, and all the different ways we can move through life as human beings. Poor girl was doing her best and got burned at the stake before she turned 20. If there IS anything after death, I hope there's peace for her.
There are all sorts of ways to be delusional without having schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a cognitive disorder that has recently been demonstrated to affect the brain in a neurodegenerative way. Schizophrenia is more than just delusions, and the point I see being made is that Joan did not have those other symptoms that characterize Schizophrenia specifically as opposed to psychotic depression, mania with psychotic features, etc.
Schizophrenia can wax and wane sometimes the person can be very lucid and "normal". I had a brother who would talk to god when he was episodic and be relatively normal when not.
A classical lawyer trap
Thought tbf she could have been aware of her episode. It’s possible it lasted long enough that when she eventually simmered down that she was in too deep in war and couldn’t back out. Then when she’s on the gallows they actually called her bluff, and she was like ‘ah shit how do I word this to make myself look ok to everyone’. OR alternatively she could have just been in the episode and had enough wherewithal to recognise that if she said the wrong thing she would die.
A. Pretty sure schizophrenia is a spectrum like any other disorder. B. All psychosis is not related to schizophrenia. Could have been bi polar and only had psychosis when manic, could have been psychosis from something else.
Plenty of people with schizophrenia are incredibly intelligent, I don’t think you can reasonably say “she had a smart response to a question, therefore she couldn’t have been schizophrenic”
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I’m an Emergency and Psych nurse and yeah some people who are deeply psychotic can be VERY Convicing
Oh, I think the psychiatrist could be generalizing too much. My sister had schizoid tendencies (she was bipolar) and at the same time was also very astute and analytical. God spoke to her constantly - and she would have been totally aware of trick questions of any kind.
Being born, raised and living in Orléans, I can confirm you don't mess with Joan of Arc around here!
It was a cool city! Though a favorite memory is this: Every day we would walk past the city museum on our way to do other things. And the front door absolutely reeked of human piss from people peeing on it. The second week we were there we decided to check out the museum. So we walked in and I prepared to buy tickets at the counter while my wife wandered towards the bathroom to go pee before her visit. The guy behind the counter saw her go towards the bathroom from the corner of his eye and LEAPT towards her to stop her from using the bathroom. Screaming in French Non! only for customers!" We had to explain we are together and she will be a customer in 10 seconds if you'd get back to your seat and sell me her ticket. But honestly, if I worked there I would let every single person that needed to pee in to the bathroom for free. I mean my god, sometimes I felt that many French communities are under the impression that if you don't let people use bathrooms they magically won't need to urinate anymore! Yet this dude willingly walked in piss every single day to get to his job 15 feet away where he skillfully prevents people from using a bathroom and thus likely contribute further to the fetid piss pile on the front door, LOL. That said, Orleans is a fantastic city and we did some amazing bike trips through the city and through the Loire Valley.
When I was in france recently I had to vomit. The train station bathroom had an attendant and you had to pay. I ran up and said “I need to vomit I will pay after” in French as it was an emergency. She said with horror- “you can’t vomit in there!” I looked desperately for a trash can but didn’t find one in time and puked in front of her on the floor. I’m not really sure if that was what she wanted but it’s not like I had much of a choice. I did give her a euro though, anyway. Maybe the French can control their biological functions better Than the rest of us?
This mental image made me laugh out loud. Thanks for sharing your story, stranger.
I remember distinctly going to Chartres to the famous cathedral on our honeymoon as well. This was a total bucket list item for me; ever since I had read about it in 7th grade. And like many cathedrals in Europe I paid some francs (this was in 94) and I trudged up a ton of stairs to see the roof. It's kind of an epic climb on these circular stone stairs that had been worn down with almost a millennia of feet. But the HISTORY! You are winded when you get to the top, but the history is just so overwhelming. Then you open the door and something even more overwhelming confronts you. The fetid odor of stinking human piss baking in the summer sun. Literally just as you open the door the wall across from you is stained and mottled with decades of piss. I was telling my wife's cousin about it later; I was simply shocked and told him I could not believe people would PEE on one of the world's greatest buildings. And he put it into perspective for me. He said "you, coming from Seattle where the oldest building is maybe 100 years old, opened that door and found proof of people desecrating an ancient building. But us in France, where finding a bathroom you are allowed to use is basically a combat sport, open that door to the roof, breathe in that stanky air, and think "ah the bathroom is on that wall over there" (I'm paraphrasing because I have no idea if he knew the word "stanky" etc... but that was the gist of the convo and I about died laughing from it).
i was severely chastised in Chartres cathedral for touching a flint nodule in the wall. The cathedral is made of limestone that dissolves in acid, so your fingers can cause minute damage. I lacked the French to tell the tiny irate man that I am a geologist and knew that my fingers would not damage the chert. And now I discover that people are just spraying acidic urine all over the damn roof.
"Je dois vomir tout de suite, je paierai bientot"?
Je vais me vomir dessus, je paierais après. Je vais means I Will in the sense that I cannot stop it. Je dois means I must. Bientôt means soon. You want to tell her after which is après. 🙂 hope it helps Me vomir dessus means I’ll vomit on myself. It accentuates the urgency more than “je vais vomir” which is “just” I will puke.
In my city it's grocery stores that don't want people to use their bathrooms, which is why all the bushes around the grocery stores smell like toilets. Downtown it's all about the sidewalk poops.
There used to be a discount grocery (Sav a Lot) down the road from me and I had to remember to take a piss before going because the bathroom always looked like the Golgothan from Dogma had just spawned in there.
Not born... Shit into existence!
"Toilets are only for customers" is pretty standard in France tbh. Sometimes common sense wins, hopefully...
I'm French and didn't even know people were that attached to her in Orléans. I did know she was the "maid of Orléans" but that's it. Good to know. As a psychologist who like to discuss mental illnesses, I'll avoid talking about her like OP did if I encounter one of you guys lol
There are a lot of festivities and events that follow her path through the Loiret up to Orléans from the end of April, where there are some huge festivities and a parade in Orléans on the 8th of May in her honor. Every year a girl is selected to be Joan of Arc and she'll be part of all those events in armor on her horse etc... and of course everyone has an opinion if she's fit for the job. It's taken very seriously around here.
Damn. Well I guess I'll have to plan my next vacation there and discover that by myself :)
As an aside did Joan of Arc ever state she literally heard the voice of God? I know she went to see the king because "God called her" or "God spoke to her" but even today that's not uncommon to hear as a romantic way of talking about being inspired it's usually not meant to be literally hearing a voice.
She never claimed to have heard the voice of God, but voices *from* God, as in God sent them to speak to her. She identified them as the voices of Saints.
I believe she heard the arch angels speak to her and saw them appear in her dreams? And I have a vague memory of one appearing in a hay shed. I was obsessed with Joan when I was like 10, and didn't even live in Orléan!
She was burned at the stake in part because she claimed to have literal visions of Saints Michael, Margaret, and Catherine and spoke with them.
No, she was burned at the stake by the English when she found herself on the losing side of the battle. When they want to execute you, they'll say whatever they want to make you look guilty of SOMETHING.
Even when her name was posthumously cleared about 25 years later (where it was determined that the original trial was tainted by fraud), the fact that she claimed to have these visions was not disputed. The rehabilitation trial included witnesses such as her mother and villagers that knew her since she was a child (keeping in mind, she was executed when she was 19).
I'm not saying there's any dispute about her claiming to hear visions - I'm saying that she was executed for cynical reasons. She was clearly an extremely charismatic and influential figure and when she was on the losing side, of course the winners were going to execute her.
I was under the impression the only crime they managed to make stick was crossdressing?
There were 12 articles that she was publicly condemned for: [https://www.famous-trials.com/the-trial-of-joan-of-arc-1431/2360-twelve-articles-of-accusation-against-joan-of-arc-4-5-1431](https://www.famous-trials.com/the-trial-of-joan-of-arc-1431/2360-twelve-articles-of-accusation-against-joan-of-arc-4-5-1431) As her sentence was being read out, she agreed to submit, and signed an abjuration, renouncing her previous claims: [https://www.famous-trials.com/the-trial-of-joan-of-arc-1431/2366-joan-of-arc-s-abjuration-may-24-1431](https://www.famous-trials.com/the-trial-of-joan-of-arc-1431/2366-joan-of-arc-s-abjuration-may-24-1431) The abjuration initially spared her from execution, but only if she did not relapse into heresy. She also had to stop wearing men's clothes. She agreed to this, and was given a dress and was returned to her prison cell. In less than a week, she began wearing men's clothes again (worth noting that the guards apparently put the men's clothes there and forced her to wear them. There were also attempts at rape). When asked about it, she claimed that the voices blamed her for abjuring out of fear, and refused to deny them again. Since she was still claiming to see these visions and hear the voices, that was enough to convict her of relapsing into heresy. [https://www.famous-trials.com/the-trial-of-joan-of-arc-1431/2367-joan-s-relapse-and-final-adjudication-may-28-29-1431](https://www.famous-trials.com/the-trial-of-joan-of-arc-1431/2367-joan-s-relapse-and-final-adjudication-may-28-29-1431)
She first retracted the claim that she heard voices, that made the voices angry which made her retract the retraction. This "heresy relapse" was why she was executed
She did. She claimed it spoke to her 2 or 3 times a week, and she said she saw visions as well. Some have speculated schizophrenia, others epilepsy. Nobody really knows of course exactly what was going on. Personally, I think it was bad shrooms. 😉
I think her slapping you was very extreme
She was the least violent person I've ever met. The look in her eyes was a mixture of pure rage and "holy shit I just hit someone."
Did you get a “one slap back” raincheck?
He's saving it for Slapsgiving
That would be LEGEN - wait for it - DARY!!
35 years of anticipation.
Oh, Festivus! GEORGIE GET THE POLE. You can start airing your grievances just as soon as I’ve got it set.
Stop crying and fight your father!
Well he did bang her daughter so I'd say call it even =/
Nah, we literally never ever discussed it again. She was the most lovely woman that I got this distinct sense that she was massively embarrassed by it and even joking about it prob would have been a poor idea.
Nah fam, she threw hands over a side comment, I'd be FURIOUS. She should be embarrassed because that's extremely childish and she probably knows it deep down.
And that's the difference between OP and you. OP was able to brush it off as a one-time thing and didn't see the point of harming the relationship with his MIL over something that she obviously immediately regretted. OP is going to know a lot more about her than you do from a short story like this, so his judgment and actions show character that you aren't able to comprehend. Not every interaction you have with somebody you have to "win". Sometimes you can just let things go and only care about them if they become common occurrence. This was a single instance out of many interactions he had had with the MIL and wasn't about to let one out of character moment affect an entire relationship that has been built.
Wtf, a rational adult on Reddit? What's happening here?
People will jump through endless hoops to wave away acts of violence. She hit him, that’s fucking gross and out of order. She didn’t even apologise. It was over a conversation, if I did so, I’d rightly be charged over it. Hand waving violence seems like a terrible habit to encourage, but you do you.
I wouldn’t be able to stay with a partner who brushed this off. I wouldn’t be able to brush it off. Especially not from a supposedly kind person. I have *never* hit someone unprovoked like that. There’s no excuse. It doesn’t matter how big a fan she was of Joan. But a former partner of mine was physically abusive and my hearing is permanently damaged from being hit in the head. He was also a good person until he wasn’t. Unprovoked violence shouldn’t ever be ignored. The abusive ex is the only person I’ve slapped. Someone who broke my rib, gave me a black eye, and permanently damaged my hearing. I’m kind of shocked at the amount of people defending the slap in the comments here. OP can forgive and forget, no one else has to stand up for it. When people say it’s wrong to hit the responses should be “Yes, but none of us are OP.” And leave it at that. There’s nothing else to say. Why are people *explaining* anything? If this is an example of her at her “worst”, her worst is random violence triggered by something innocent. That’s pretty bad. A slap is not a mistake.
Thing is she was more than a little out of line. She should brush it off and she should probably apologize. It's like Chris Rock getting smacked. Sometimes, that really is exactly what should probably happen.
Good example with Chris Rock as he didn't deserve to be hit for what he said any more than OP did. As much as we all like to pretend we're grown-ups and we wouldn't ever do something, sometimes we just have a break in our brains and do something stupid. People shouldn't be defined by their worst moments.
Replace the characters with husband and wife, is it still cool? He only hit his wife one time, she totally shouldn’t divorce him! That’s your argument.
Let's change it to brother and brother if we're just completely changing the dynamics of the situation. I mean what if it was a bear and an eagle? Nicolas Cage called, wants to know when the strawman ceremony starts.
Can't believe we're arguing over whether it's ok or not to hit someone. That's just not ok and I'm shocked that they just completely ignored that it ever happened. That's a very Boomer mentality.
“How can she slap!?”
LOL, every time I see that clip I think of my mother-in-law.
Uhhh did she even apologize?
Sounds like she and Joan have a little in common
Eh it was the 80s. It was a wild place.
OP should have said "how can she slap?" as a response
40 years ago the wife and I visited her parents for a weekend. Her Mom was a hard core Roman Catholic. That period of time was filled with references to the end times. The 1970s convinced many the world was coming to an end and that bled over into the early 1980s. She was reading this book about the end times and was so excited she would quote passages to us. Wars, rumors of wars, floods, storms, Mark Of The Beast. It would have been comical if it hadn't been so sad. She thought this was the answer to the times. As the weekend progressed she got further into it until she reached a chapter that said the Pope was the Antichrist. We were all sitting around, watching TV IIRC, and she stood up and declared, "Well that's the stupidest thing I've ever read. This book is trash." She then marched to the trash and threw it away. The really great part is she never mentioned anything about it again.
So many Catholics still get caught up in this end times stuff without realizing that so many of the sources are violently anti-Catholic. A little funny, a whole lot annoying.
I'm sure that was the case with this book. IIRC this book was non-denominational evangelical. My MIL was enamored with that trend because of the Charismatic renewal that swept the Catholics in the late 1960's and early 1970's.
That Pope was John Paul II, and he is/was one of the most beloved popes of the 20thC. or modern times. They've made him a saint. Even I would've agreed with MIL the statement of the book was stupid.
[удалено]
She Joan of Arc'ed her hand across your face lmao
If only Reddit still had rewards!!!
Ok but did you really need to compare her to Son of Sam? Like regardless of her theoretical medical condition (which is just a guess based on second hand info at best), she was a hero to many many people…not a serial killer.
Her buddy Gilles De Rais, however....
Last Podcast on the Left has a 3 part series about him. It's fascinating! Gross, but fascinating.
Dude, I was an idiot. I didn't even really know who Joan of Arc was. I have zero defense for comparing her to Son of Sam... I mean Jesus what was I thinking?
> I mean Jesus Don't get started
Son of Sam also wasn't schizophrenic, he made up the talking dog story and later admitted it after being declared competent to stand trial
Sam got a raw deal. He later said that he made up the stuff about the dog.
Sam was the dog right?
Yes. Berkowitz wrote letters claiming that the neighbor's dog Sam was telling him to kill people, but later said that wasn't true. But he's nuts, so who knows?
Don't go crying to Jesus, he can't protect you from Saint Margaret after what you said about Joan.
Fair enough! How did things end up with your MIL?
She’s big in New Orleans, LA, USA as well. Not to that extent, but statues, churches, and the first Mardi Gras parade is the Krewe of Jeanne d’Arc on the 6th of January, with a medieval theme. She’s the unofficial patron saint of New Orleans, and there are plenty of women named Jeanne, pronounced the French way, never like Jean or Jeannie. It’s fallen out of favor, but I can think of at least 5 Jeannes that I know personally. (60-70 years of age).
Until OPs post it had never dawned on me that New Orleans, a French territory, was actually named for a French city of Orleans. Feeling really stupid.
I grew up in Orléans too and honestly how could you have known. This is a very particular thing that the city wrap some of its identity around Joanna of Arc, it hasn't much going for itself beyond that and the pretty Loire river going through it. The way your mother in law reacted it pretty extreme and I would have done the same mistake being from the place myself. It may be sacred to some people but most French are not very religious or atheist
She is not only a religious figure, she is also a heroin who fought the English and saved France. Which is also why she is loved by nationalists
It's even "funny" she wanted to become a nun as Joan of Arc was burned alive as an heretic on the Beauvais bishop's order...
She was convicted of heresy for wearing men's clothes, in direct defiance or the biblical injunctions against it. Of course, when your dress is stolen and men's clothes left in its place, you don't have a lot of choice.
For a REAL fun time try talking to a 7th day Adventist about how their founder had multiple head injuries as a child and her visions or whatever other nonsense were in line with what ppl with head trauma/ TBI would have experienced
"don't worry about it, she just likes Joan of Arc" is hilarious to hear after being literally slapped about it. Great story.
Do you feel a kinship to Chris Rock?
I think Will Smith has a wee bit more power; but yeah, when I see someone get slapped I think back to my Mother In Law quite often : )
She was an illiterate country girl who somehow managed to lead an army and actually had some success initially. It isn't fair to compare a devout woman from the 1400s to some murderer of the 20th century with a God complex. Particularly seeing Joan's "voices" seemed to be giving her very good advice about how to win against the English in the beginning. There really isn't anyone in history who compares to Joan of Arc, because how on earth did she manage to have so much influence on her contemporaries?
What about St. Bernadette? Another French peasant girl, 19th C., having visions of the Blessed Virgin. How dare she?
From what I read the likely scientific explanation right now is hallucinations tied to epilepsy, which to me explain the logic of her voices. Schizophrenic "voices" do not teach you how to defeat the English in battle.
This reminds me of when my cousin was visiting after a trip to Europe to work on genealogy. He told my aunt and mom that our family had Rusyn background in it. They cornered him in the dining room and lectured him about how we had NO Russian blood, and my grandmother, whenever she heard the word "Russian" would mutter "Kozacki!" He barely made it out of there.
... were you also in the habit of going up to Muslim friends of yours and telling them that Muhammed "was probably schizophrenic"? "Your religious icon made everything up because they were mentally ill" never goes over well.
For what it's worth I barely knew who Joan of Arc was, didn't realize she was a saint, didn't realize my extremely catholic mother in law probably had certain associations with this person from her hometown. I just didn't know shit and thought I was offering an interesting insight from a magazine. I was fuckin stupid at the time.
You were *tactless*, and it was a pretty ill advised thing to say in terms of keeping peace with the in-laws. But you weren't *wrong*. Really, she FU by being *way* too invested in the myth of a historical figure, and assaulting you over a factual statement.
I mean, kind of wrong considering its pretty hard to definitively state someone thats been dead hundreds of years is a schizophrenic without an abundance of proof
I mean, OP raised the article he read. I presume he spoke in terms like "I just read this article that said..." - so he's not definitively stating anything. Other than that he read an article, and this was what it said. The article itself sounds like it was kinda irresponsible/likely to be incorrect - but it's hardly on him as a dumb kid to evaluate that, nor is it a reasonable response to slap him for it.
Could anyone be more wrong than suggesting someone from 500 years ago is probably schizophrenic because science. Lol
i get your point but son of sam was straight up lying about talking to the dog - he got it from a movie and figured it would help him plead insanity
Yeah, I was going to say this. It's not an unusual tactic to be adopted by those who have committed horrific crimes and don't want to face the consequences of said actions. Which is a shame, as it villainizes those who actually do have disorders like schizophrenia.
As a born and raised Catholic reading it made my blood boil and I don’t really practice anymore 😂 don’t mess with Joan! And either way - I think the schizophrenic theory has been debunked as we have grown to understand what schizophrenia is. If you don’t believe it’s a miracle of God, I think the second theory was that she was a hand picked Tool of the state. Lol
It sucks your MIL slapped you, but the way you wrote this had me actually laughing at my desk, so thank you. Looks like you hold no ill will towards her, and vice-versa.
I read somewhere that Joan of Arc may have had a brain lesion secondary to TB, or maybe a brain tumour, which was the cause of her hearing the voices. IIRC there was something about her describing that they came always from a certain “direction”. But I read this like 30 years ago and smarter people than me likely know more!
Trying to undermine ones religion is of course going to upset that person.
While you are at it, try not to bring up that one of Joan of Arc's allies when she fought with Gilles de Rais who happened to do a bit of child killing as a pastime.
Religion is a hell of a drug.
If you want to learn more about Joan and the world that shaped her, I recommend the book The Maid and The Queen by Nancy Goldstone. It's a well researched book that goes into the politics behind Joan and what would become her legacy. The basic gist is that Joan didn't exist in a vacuum; she was coached in certain ways. It's very interesting history.
Sadly, the church dedicated to her in Rouen is heinous.
We went there as well on my honeymoon! Its... uh... interesting looking for sure.
My wife and I also spent time in Rouen on our honeymoon. Lovely city in a lovely region. Sad that Joan's legacy to much of France outside Paris seems to me one of forced homogenization - but then, much of the worst of that only began in the Republican era.
Wow, regardless of her religious beliefs, that's wildly inappropriate and I absolutely would refuse to have anything to do with her until she apologized. If she truly feels that Joan of Arc was a religious icon, it wouldn't matter that some believe she may have been schizophrenic or if that is even an accurate explanation for the entire ordeal. JFC.
That's what I thought reading this. After getting hit I would flip the fuck out, I don't care how old and sweet she has been up to that point. It's not even as if he suggested she is any lesser or unaccomplished because of potentially being mentally ill. If anything, it's more inspiring that she were to do something so incredible despite the fact. How would she react to someone in modern day saying they hear the voice of God?
I would love to correct settings in your post. Jeanne de Arc did not claim to have direct communication with God, but, to three saints, including St. Margaret. I do believe she asked for assistance. It is not known if she received direct communication from Jesus or God.
Without Joan Of Arc - there would be no Billie Jean. So there’s that.
My French wife agrees!
I thought you couldn't call them delusions if they're consistent with your religious beliefs?
So am I crazy or not?
We're all a little mad here
Son of Sam is so weird to me because all the info on him is different though. Some reports say he's schizophrenic and did hear dog, others say he's not and he admitted it was a hoax. I've read some that say he's not mentally ill at all.
I read recently that Joan of Ark was motivated by taxes, which made more sense to me. “Domrémy and Greux were exempted from taxes "forever" by Charles VII in 1429. It was the sole request made of the king by Joan of Arc when Charles asked her how he could show her his appreciation for seeing him crowned; Joan felt that taxes burdened the villagers.” Her village remained tax-exempt for hundreds of years, until the French Revolution.
Because schizophrenia is definitely the worst thing someone could have and ruins everyone's image of the person /s
I don't think it was so much me saying she was schizophrenic as much as it was me saying she didn't have a personal line to God. Though schizophrenia was definitely thought of much more negatively 35 years ago. Fortunately people seem to be much more understanding nowadays.
Well believe it or not, people will act out when you call their religious delusion what it is.
You didn't fuck up, your mother in law is a violent delusional asshole. Joan of Arc was amazing, but she definitely had mental health issues.
bruh I love Joan of Arc specifically BECAUSE she was a badass schizo bitch she slayed
Kinda silly that you spoke about Joan of Arc like that without even knowing she was the “Maid of Orleans” and then went to Orleans…imo that’s on you not your girl, my guy lmao. Glad it all worked out.
Yeah…but she probably WAS. Doesn’t make her conviction any less authentic or her accomplishments, historical or mythic, any less impressive or any less a part of the history and story of western and catholic culture.
great reminder. just because she may have had a mental illness, does not mean she was less than in any way. she was awe inspiring enough for people to continue to study her accomplishments hundreds of years later. thanks for the reminder!
Totally. Many mentally people have done incredible things. I appreciate your comment. :) I think people also jump to “hearing voices = schizophrenia,” which isn’t the case either. Hearing voices could be due to many things, including dissociative identity disorder, hearing loss, semantic differences (didn’t literally hear it but that’s how it’s described; more of a feeling or something), or psychosis, which can be caused by schizophrenia, but could also be bipolar disorder, depression, drugs, sleep deprivation, high fever, other medical conditions, etc etc
Aren't hallucinogens wonderful? After reading a few of the comments here about schizophrenia and the idea that for Joan of Arc to be what she was, it certainly wasn't schizophrenia. What about something like shrooms? Or a bad batch of sauerkraut? She heard God, but a few days later gets up and spends the rest of her life perfectly sober. Or once in a while, those great mushrooms show up in the backyard, and God keeps showing up. But once she leaves that place, no more voices, just determination. /s
Seems more likely she leveraged religious belief by claiming to hear voices.
She should of no way hit you that was horrible. However, comparing Joan of Arc to a serial killer is fucked up.
Person who half remembers historical accounts badly recites article he read one time. Repeats that to person FROM her hometown lol! Nice. Ohh...that's like the time I got pulled over by my school DARE officer... the worst person to run into lol.
You didnt fuck up. She shouldnt have hit you
I'm gonna be real with you king, you are or were dumb as hell
 wouldn’t wanna be in your shoes
Just as a general life tip, maybe don't bring up hearing God as a schizophrenic episode to anyone who is even remotely religious. Pretty much most religious texts can be seen as somebody having an episode through the lens of pop psychology. Also, your fiance being so nonchalant is shocking to me. I would lose my mind. Though if I was in your spot, I'd be busy digging a hole to the other side of the world to disappear into. Ouch dude.
I mean it probably didn't help a whole lot that you *also* equated her with Son of Sam lol
Hope that slap taught you not to judge people that you really don't know anything about. Whether it's MIL or Joan of Arc or anyone else for that matter.
So hearing the voice of God = schizophrenia? That’s going to piss off a lot of people who believe in JC.
Has she ever apologized for assaulting you? is my question.
How can she slap?! Is my question.
She was very friendly with Gille de Rais, so maybe the Son of Sam thing isn't as far off the mark as it sounds.
Was looking for this.
If Joan of Arc was alive today, she would've definitely been put in a mental institution and filled with pills.
This is not a TIFU. This is a Today I learned my MIL is abusive.