The Permeable Self

Starting from the premise that the medieval self was more permeable than its modern counterpart, Newman explores the ways in which the self's porous boundaries admitted openness to penetration by divine and demonic spirits and even by other human beings. She takes up the idea of "coinherence," a state familiarly expressed in the amorous and devotional formula "I in you and you in me," to consider the theory and practice of exchanging the self with others in five relational contexts of increasing intimacy. Moving from the outside in, her chapters deal with charismatic teachers and their students, mind-reading saints and their penitents, lovers trading hearts, pregnant mothers who metaphorically and literally carry their children within, and women and men in the throes of demonic obsession. In a provocative conclusion, she sketches some of the far-reaching consequences of this type of personhood by drawing on comparative work in cultural history, literary criticism, anthropology, psychology, and ethics.