THERESE OF LISIEUX

THE CENTAURY SAINT

The following character study of a person from history was written in partial fulfillment of Flower Essence Society (FES) requirements for certification as a flower essence therapy practitioner.  In this study, the person's life is explored as an archetypal expression of one primary flower essence.  If you have come to this site out of an interest in Therese but don't know what flower essences are, before reading this study you may benefit from a brief introduction, which may be found by clicking here.

Just as the delicate, lovely, and inconspicuous Centaury flower, often overlooked by humans, lies humbly near the earth, frequently growing amidst the weeds, so Therese of Lisieux, fondly called by Catholics the "Little Flower," lived an ordinary life hidden away in the Carmelite Monastery of Lisieux, France and was considered "nothing special" by most of the sisters with whom she lived.  It wasn't until after her death in 1897 that the extraordinary beauty and treasures of her spirituality of the "Little Way" were recognized by the world, leading to her swift canonization in 1925 and subsequent declaration as a Doctor of the Church in 1997.  Today, she is probably the most popular of all Catholic saints, as well as having been proclaimed by many popes the greatest saint and healer of modern times. 

Therese's sainthood did not come easily.  She had much to heal and overcome in her sensitive, vulnerable temperament.  Her primary psychic wound, chiseled into her soul during a very difficult childhood, lay in the area of loss.  This created the foundation for two primary needs and patterns within Therese's personality:  an excessive need for love, manifested mostly in her childhood and addressed by the Chicory flower essence, and a need to please others in order to receive affirmation and acceptance, as addressed by the Centaury flower essence.  As Therese grew and made progress in the spiritual life, she was able to allow these wounds to be transformed.  What follows is a documentation of the wounding and the transformation within Therese of Lisieux.

The youngest of five daughters, Therese was born into a very loving Catholic family in Alencon, France in 1873.  At the time of Therese's birth, her mother had breast cancer, and at the age of two months Therese had to be given to a couple living in the nearby countryside to be nursed due to her mother's illness.  She spent one day a week as an infant with her real family and the rest of the week with her nursing mother.  At the age of eighteen months Therese returned home to live with her family.  She exhibited a great deal of separation anxiety at that time, clinging to her mother, trying to get her mother's attention, and crying whenever her mother was out of her sight.  Therese's mother said, "The poor little thing doesn't want me to leave her.  She is continually at my side."  "Therese loved to go into the garden but she would not stay there if her mother wasn't there and would cry until she was taken to her mother," says Vilma Seelaus, a Carmelite sister who has studied Therese's life and spirituality,  lectures on her, and has produced a tape on her development, "Therese:  Child, Girl, Woman."  Therese's early infancy separations had created a deeply rooted attachment disorder in young Therese and predisposed her to insecurity and an excessive need for love.  This difficult infancy also set the stage for what would become Therese's primary temperament:  she learned to be a pleaser, to love and serve as a way to find approval. 

As a child, Therese exhibited physical weakness and lack of robust physical health, which are indicative of the Centaury type.  She had asthma, bronchitis, flu, colds, and, as an adult, developed her final illness:  tuberculosis.  The lungs were Therese's physical weak point, unlike the typical digestive weakness of the Centaury type.  In her autobiography, Story of a Soul, Therese describes her childhood self as a ponderer and, at the age of two, as a sensitive, strong-willed child who would go into tantrums when things didn't go her way.  At the age of three, her mother describes her as having a stubborn streak that was invincible: "She is not docile and can be terribly obstinate.  She is also very good, very frank, and when she has done the slightest thing wrong everyone has to know about it."  Her stubbornness and strong will are not Centaury qualities, although her overly sensitive conscience does reflect a Centaury temperament.  However, two- and three-year-old children, going through the "terrible two's," often exhibit the kind of stubborn  behavior described by her mother.  They are more indicative of childhood Chicory states.  More importantly, Therese's childhood losses have only just begun.  As she continues to experience losses, she will experience greater movement toward dependency and a weakening of the will, both indicative of the Centaury temperament.

Therese's deepest wound occurred when she was four; her mother died.  Therese's personality changed and she became, as described by Vilma Seelaus, more shy, serious, retiring, and sensitive (one look would reduce her to tears).  She began to manifest more negative traits of the Centaury type, considered by some practitioners as the most sensitive of the thirty-eight Bach flower types (according to Bach flower practitioner and author Mechthild Scheffer).  During any crisis Therese very easily succumbed to tears and emotional upset.  This emotional state continued for the next ten years. The losses Therese  experienced as a child contributed an underlying deprivation in the Chicory sphere which further weakened her basic Centaury nature. She never developed the overbearing qualities nor the powerful personality of the Chicory type.  Therese received so much loving attention from her father and sisters after her mother's death that perhaps basic Chicory needs were met to a sufficient degree not to cause a full-blown Chicory personality to develop. 

At the age of four, when the object of Therese's devotion, her mother, was taken from her, she claimed her oldest sister, Pauline, as her new mother.  "As a child, Therese's attachments to her family were passionate, and Pauline was now her ideal; she wanted to be just like her," says Vilma Seelaus.  Therese deeply loved Pauline, and, typical of the Centaury type, bonded with her, perhaps to the point--using our contemporary psychological language--of enmeshment. 

When Therese was ten, Pauline left home to enter the Carmelite monastery in Lisieux, the city the family had to moved to after the mother's death. This was Therese's third childhood loss, and it greatly traumatized her.  Carmelite monasteries at that time were all cloistered and extremely strict about contact with those outside the monastery (as well as about contact among the sisters within).  Therese would be limited to regulated, scheduled visits with other family members present when her beloved Pauline would be seen behind a grille, or iron grating, a feature of cloistered monasteries at that time.  Although Therese had transferred her affection to Marie, another of her sisters, after Pauline's departure (Therese says she loved Marie so much "that she could not live without her gentle companionship"), the loss of Pauline and tortuous visits to the monastery were too much for sensitive little Therese.  She developed a serious and mysterious illness and hovered near death while her loving and supportive family watched over her and prayed. 

It is possible that Therese was manifesting an extreme Chicory state through her mysterious illness.  Was she expressing through her illness "the unvoiced psychological need for attention and love" characteristic of the negative Chicory state, according to Cornelia Richardson-Boedler (Applying Homoeopathy and Bach Flower Therapy to Psychosomatic Illness)?  Was her illness an unconscious, manipulative attempt, in true Chicory form, to "get Pauline back"?  Was this the only outlet available to little Therese because, as an authentic Centaury, feelings of jealousy and anger toward Pauline would be completely unacceptable to her conscious mind?  This serious illness was a very critical period in young Therese's life.  The family had brought a special statue of the Virgin Mary to her room while they prayed for a  miracle.  Eventually, Therese was miraculously healed when she felt that the Virgin Mary smiled at her through this statue.  She had, in effect, transferred her need for love, nurturance, and mothering to a source that could not be taken from her:  the Virgin Mary.  Healing and forward movement in the Chicory sphere had graciously occurred.

Another major difficulty in Therese's childhood centered around an extremely painful period of scrupulosity.  Scrupulosity has been (and is less so now) a rather common Christian, and especially Catholic, "disease," which is especially prevalent in individuals with a sensitive conscience.  The individual, in attempting to please God, becomes painfully aware of every thought, every event, every tiny nuance which may be "sinfulî in God's eyes.  The scrupulous person even begins to create "sinful" internal dialog in fear that he or she might be thinking this or that sinful thing.  Scrupulosity is an excruciating, draining, entrapping condition for which there is no "out" except the discovery of God's love.   Confessing one's sins may give temporary relief, but a sinful thought may occur only five minutes after leaving the confessional, thus necessitating another confession.  The Centaury type is known, according to Cornelia Richardson-Boedler, to have a finely tuned conscience and to be unusually conscientious and easily aroused to guilt.  Therese's religious upbringing and desire for holiness, coupled with her sensitive Centaury nature, created fertile ground for the blossoming of this disease.  It is an illness associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).  Dr. Ian Osborn, a specialist in obsessive-compulsive disorder and a lover of Therese's spirituality, believes that Therese suffered from OCD.  She is known in some circles as the "OCD saint" and is called upon as the "patron saint" of OCD sufferers.  Shame and guilt, which is addressed by the Pine essence, are the most powerful emotions present during periods of scrupulosity.  Pine is often indicated for use in conjunction with Centaury since the "try to please/fail/feel guilt" cycle is such a common phenomenon in Centaury types (or its variation, the "try to please/fail/feel anger and resentment that the effort to please was not acknowledged/feel guilt over the anger" cycle). 

 Vilma Seelaus describes Therese as "a child with a seemingly desperate need to please who found her security in the approval of others."  She believes that, without the support of God and her  loving family, Therese's "internal and external trials could have led to an emotional breakdown."  But Therese's family provided "a loving, safe, container for her, and her father's love became increasingly tender" after the death of Therese's mother, providing additional support to young Therese.  Therese herself, in reflecting as an adult on herself as a child of 12 1/2 (just before her major conversion experience), says, "I was only a child who appeared to have no will but that of others."  Therese had a deeply spiritual nature and a desire to grow in holiness.  Her practice of virtue consisted in performing acts to please her sister Celine.  She would then get irritated when Celine did not notice her virtuous acts!  Her needs for approval and acceptance were so great that she was incapable of performing a truly selfless act.  It seems, in the case of Therese, that early infancy experiences predisposed a perhaps already sensitive child to even greater weakness, vulnerability, and separation anxiety, and that the negative Centaury  state, characterized by a weak will, undeveloped personality, and oversensitivity, was set more firmly within her as she continued to experience loss after loss.  She was fortunate that her family members were loving and supportive.  Had she lived with individuals capable of manipulating her sensitive nature to meet their own needs, Therese perhaps would not have been able to  overcome her emotional handicaps and would have ended up funneling her life energy into the care of a dominant family member, in typical Centaury fashion, rather than becoming a saint.

The primary spiritual and transformative event of Therese's life occurred when she was fourteen.  It was Christmas Eve, and the family had returned from midnight Mass.  Therese, who still enjoyed childhood customs related to Christmas, wanted to put presents into slippers in front of the fireplace.  She overheard her father's remark that he was glad that this was the last year they would have to do that.  Devastated, she went upstairs.  But then, instead of her falling into emotional turmoil and despair, something different happened.  In an instant--an instant of grace, in Therese's perspective--she was able to gain new strength, overcome her extreme sensitivity, and go downstairs to open presents joyfully with her father.  This was the major turning point in Therese's life, and she never returned to be the "old Therese" after this.   She regained, in this instant, what she had lost when her mother died ten years earlier:  she regained inner strength and a strengthened will.  Bro. Joseph Schmidt, a Theresian scholar, retreat leader, and author of Praying with Therese of Lisieux, describes the miracle of that Christmas Eve night in this way:  "Therese failed to please her father that night, and she bore the pain of it and did not die."  While giving a retreat talk, Bro. Schmidt remarked that Therese was always good at pleasing people her whole life, but after her conversion she did not compromise herself, and she pleased people out of wholeness and not self-centeredness. 

From this turning point on, Therese was able to transcend her scrupulosity.  "A burning desire for God awakened within her," says Vilma Seelaus.  Not long after her conversion, she felt a call to enter Carmel, the Carmelite monastery which Pauline had entered.  Entering Carmel would necessitate leaving her beloved father, which would be extremely difficult for both of them. Therese was his "queen," and losing her would very painful for him.  Nevertheless, Therese was able to follow her call, risk displeasing her father and causing him pain, and, although she still loved him and worried about him, leave him and enter Carmel.  She did this at the age of fifteen, having been granted an exception to the age rule for entering monasteries. 

Within Carmel her struggle for individuation continued.  She had to work hard to retain healthy boundaries with her "former mother" and beloved sister Pauline and with her other two sisters who entered the monastery one by one.  Her deepest love was God, and she strove to love God first and foremost and to "purify" her attachments to her family members.  But she did this in a healthy way, still loving them and maintaining contact.  She strove for an inner purification.  Given Therese's childhood and deep attachment issues, this did not come easily for her.  She developed a will of steel in dealing with herself and her relationships within the monastery, but always tempered by her steadily growing awareness of God's love and mercy and by a surrender and abandonment to the higher will of God. 

In our contemporary culture, one who is suffering from a need to please others and a weak will would be encouraged to discover his or her own needs and desires and to meet them or follow them.  But Therese was different, and she lived in a different time and culture.  She herself experienced an ardent love of and desire for God, and she lived in a culture which was not characterized by a high level of focus on the individual and the importance of the individual's desires and needs, as is the case in contemporary American society.  Therese found her way out of the "Centaury trap" through transcendence.  She never lost her Centaury desire to please, but she was freed from the tyranny of pleasing others through seeking solely to please the one she loved most, through "giving pleasure to the one she knew loved her," says Vilma Seelaus.  "Wouldn't that be pleasing to Jesus?" was a thought frequently in her mind.  Her pathway to freedom is described beautifully by the Carmelite priest Marc Foley in The Love that Keeps Us Sane:  Living the Little Way of St. Therese of Lisieux:

"Therese wanted to become like a little grain of sand, hidden from all eyes for a reason:  'so that Jesus alone may be able to see it.'  She sought her true reflection in the face of Jesus alone.  Therese chose to direct her gaze inward so that the opinion of God alone would matter to her.  In doing so, even though she suffered the misunderstandings and rash judgments of others, she freed herself from the exhausting task of trying to win their approval."

Therese was certainly aware of her own desires and will, but she chose instead to please God, to offer them to God and seek instead the higher will of God.  She did this out of pure love, not egocentric love.  The following story from her life, along with the inner motivations disclosed to us by Therese, shows us a highly mature and developed Centaury type "in action."  The superior had asked for someone to help a sister who was working with a tree outside and said the first of the three sisters present to take off her apron would be allowed to do this task.  Therese wanted very much to do it, but she realized that another sister also wanted to do it.  Therese made the conscious choice to take off her apron more slowly so that the other sister would be the one chosen to help with the desired task.  She did this out of love and service to her sister and, more importantly, as an offering of love to God.  She was able consciously to sacrifice her desire to a higher, transcendent desire, her desire to love and serve God.  An immature Centaury type would have sacrificed her desire out of a self-centered motive  so that the other sister would like her, or to make God like her.  Or perhaps an immature Centaury would have sacrificed her desire without any "self" involved in the process and out of an unconscious compulsion to please.  As a child, Therese made sacrifices, but she wanted attention and appreciation for having done them.  As a mature Centaury, she found joy in loving and serving without self-centered motivations.

In seeking solely to please God, she found freedom in her relationships.   Her transformation is evident in the following (Therese as quoted in Foley, as above):

"If I'm not loved, that's just too bad!  I tell the whole truth, and if anyone doesn't wish to know the truth, let her not come looking for me. . . .  We should never allow kindness to degenerate into weakness.  When we have scolded someone with just reason, we must leave the matter there, without allowing ourselves to be touched to the point of tormenting ourselves for having caused pain or at seeing one suffer and cry.  To run after the afflicted one to console her does more harm than good.  Leaving her to herself forces her to have recourse to God in order to see her faults and humble herself."

Those are the words only  of a transformed Centaury!  But under what may smack of toughness in the quote above was a sensitive and tender heart.  The mature spirituality of Therese evolved out of her struggle with her own woundings and compulsions.  Her images of God reflect her movement from scrupulosity and trying to please to love and compassion.  "God is more tender than any mother," she tells us, and her writings are filled with touching, loving images which reflect this truth.  As Vilma Seelaus states, "At the height of Therese's maturity she becomes again the child:  the child in God's arms.  She no longer needs to see this love reflected in her parents as she did when a child.  She experiences it in the depth of her being."

A summary, in her own words, of Therese's spirituality or "little way" which beautifully expresses the healings and inspirations experienced during her short life is presented below (compiled by John Nelson in his book Living the Little Way of Love):

First plant photo:   Centaury (copyright by J. Barnard, Healing Herbs, England).

Second plant photo:  Centaury (courtesy of Healing Arts Press, Inner Traditions International, taken from The Family Herbal by Barbara and Peter Theiss).

Third plant photo:  Chicory, taken at the Trappist Monastery of Gethsemani, Kentucky.

Fourth plant photo:  Chicory (copyright by J. Barnard, Healing Herbs, England).

Fifth plant photo:  Pine (copyright by J. Barnard, Healing Herbs, England).

Sixth plant photo:  Centaury (courtesy of Healing Arts Press, Inner Traditions International, taken from The Encyclopedia of Bach Flower Therapy by Mechthild Scheffer).