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In one of the ascetic visions he complained to his guide (Christ) that nobody had any faith in him, so that he was unable to carry out the commands laid upon him. The reply he was given is, unfortunately, obscure to us: ‘Although they will not believe me, yet I know well what has happened, but I am not able to declare it.’ Especially illuminating, however, are the experiences which his heavenly Guide made him have among the anchorites. He came to a cave in which an old man had been sitting for the last sixty years, and in answer to a question he learnt that this old man had been fed every day by God’s angels. And then he saw for himself how an angel brought the old man food: ‘Three dishes with food, a loaf, a dumpling and some drink.’ After the anchorite had eaten, the angel collected everything and carried it away. We can see what the temptation was which the pious visions offered the painter: they were meant to induce him to adopt a mode of existence in which he need no longer worry about sustenance. The utterances of Christ in the last vision are also worthy of note. After threatening that, if he did not prove amenable, something would happen which would oblige him and the people to believe [in it], Christ gave him a direct warning that I should not heed the people; even if they were to persecute me or give me no help, God would not abandon me’.

Christoph Haizmann was enough of an artist and a child of the world to find it difficult to renounce this sinful world. Nevertheless, in view of his helpless position, he did so in the end. He entered a Holy Order. With this, both his internal struggle and his material need came to an end. In his neurosis, this outcome was reflected in the fact of his seizures and visions being brought to an end by the return of an alleged first bond. Actually, both portions of his demonological illness had the same meaning. He wanted all along simply to make his life secure. He tried first to achieve this with the help of the Devil at the cost of his salvation; and when this failed and had to be given up, he tried to achieve it with the help of the clergy at the cost of his freedom and most of the possibilities of enjoyment in life. Perhaps he himself was only a poor devil who simply had no luck; perhaps he was too ineffective or too untalented to make a living, and was one of those types of people who are known as ‘eternal sucklings’ - who cannot tear themselves away from the blissful situation at the mother’s breast, and who, all through their lives, persist in a demand to be nourished by someone else. - And so it was that, in this history of his illness, he followed the path which led from his father, by way of the Devil as a father substitute, to the pious Fathers of the Church.

To superficial observation Haizmann’s neurosis appears to be a masquerade which overlays a part of the serious, if commonplace, struggle for existence. This is not always the case, but it is not infrequently so. Analysts often discover how unprofitable it is to treat a business man who ‘though otherwise in good health, has for some time shown signs of a neurosis’. The business catastrophe with which he feels himself threatened throws up the neurosis as a by-product; and this gives him the advantage of being able to conceal his worries about his real life behind his symptoms. But apart from this the neurosis serves no useful purpose whatever, since it uses up forces which would have been more profitably employed in dealing rationally with the dangerous situation.