This book can be read as an intellectual rejection of modernity, and a turning toward prior eras for wisdom on how to live. Author Thomas Moore criticizes the modern era's gradual forgetting of its history, myth, religion and cultural heritage, and shows how this leads to a generalized shallowness and ignorance about what's going on inside our own bodies and minds.
Moore believes we moderns are losing contact with our souls, and he's right. There is very little in the modern era to teach us what to do when our souls suffer.
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The author, an admirably eclectic thinker, takes the reader on an unusual journey, drawing on mythology, art, literature, on various Renaissance-era thinkers like Paracelsus, Nicholas of Cusa and Marsilio Ficino, as well as various religious traditions. Moore also puts the reader in contact with many of the insights of Carl Jung (well-known for turning to mythology in his own creative and unusual way) as well as more recent thinkers like James Hillman and Robert Sardello, known for deliberately incorporating diverse aspects spirituality into their psychological practice. While the book at times meanders, the intellectual eclectism here is beautiful, and it exposes the reader to many ideas, writers and works worth pursuing. See below for more on this.
A few thoughts on some of Moore's strategies for navigating challenges in life, whether psychological or existential. One of his striking insights is to encourage us to embrace the things about us that we struggle with, rather than trying to have them eliminated or "fixed." He counsels the reader to see our feelings--even self-evidently negative mental conditions like rage, jealousy, even narcissism and depression--as serving some function, as communicating something to us. Essentially, he asks us to ask ourselves: "The fact that we're experiencing this emotion, what does it tell us? What does it suggest about what's going on inside us?" The author warns that "the repressed always returns in monstrous form" and so he counsels us to sit with these mental conditions, embrace them, and even permit them to enrich our life. This helps the reader check in and stay in contact with his emotional state, and as a result it's an incredibly useful psychological metaskill for handling reality.
The author distills many, many striking ideas from Carl Jung over the course of the book. I'll single out just one: an extended discussion of Jung's tower, a stone tower that Jung built himself that served as a place of inspiration, a retreat from modernity, and where he arrived at many of his insights. The author has readers think of ways to metaphorically apply Jung's tower to our own lives, perhaps by dedicated a room--or even just part of a room--as our own escape from modernity, where we can do our thinking and look after our souls.
I'll also single out the author's insightful discussions of how to work with dreams and his various suggestions on how to interpret them--or as the case may be, not overinterpret them. It is one of many instances where this book sings out with insight.
Finally, I'd like to thank this author for his wonderfully wide range of reading suggestions sprinkled throughout his book. It is a bookworm's dream, ranging from relatively obscure Italian Renaissance-era thinkers to late 20th century books by Tracy Kidder, to the works of Carl Jung, to studies on mythology, and there's even an idiosyncratic book on the aesthetics and ethics of Japanese craftwork. As usual, I've assembled a reading list at the very end of this post under the heading "To Read." I can't wait to get started.
[Readers, what follows are my notes and quotes from the text: I include them to help me better remember what I read. As always, feel free to skim or skip.]
Notes:
Introduction:
if "The great malady of the twentieth century, implicated in all of our troubles and affecting us individually and socially, is 'loss of soul.' When soul is neglected, it doesn't just go away; it appears symptomatically in obsessions, addictions, violence, and loss of meaning. ...the root problem is that we have lost our wisdom about the soul, even our interest in it.... But within our history we do have remarkable sources of insight from people who wrote explicitly about the nature and needs of the soul, and so we can look to the past for guidance in restoring this wisdom." Comments here on Renaissance and Middle Ages psychology, the humble self-help writings from that era; the author is interested in suggestions for a practical down-to-earth philosophy of life, he imagines his own book as a guide to soulful living without striving for perfection. [It's interesting how he's finding many of his answers in prior centuries: I'm finding the same. Most of the things we need the ancients have already found for us.]
xii Citing Jung's comment that every psychological problem is ultimately a matter of religion; the author doesn't want to separate the two domains [like modern psychology tends to do].
xiii Comments here on Mercury; "a dose of Mercury," who is the god of fictions. fabrications, thievery, trickery and sleight-of-hand. Also comments on therapy as "nothing more than bringing imagination to areas that are devoid of it, which then must express themselves by becoming symptomatic."
xiiiff On "soul" as a place somewhere between thinking and our body; the thing that holds the two things together; borrowing ideas from Marsilio Ficino. Also on the Christian concept of "care of the soul" or "charge of the soul" like a parish priest and his responsibility for those living in the parish.
xviff On the modern ailments of emptiness, meaninglessness, disillusionment, a yearning and hunger for spirituality, all of which "reflect a loss of soul." "A soulful personality is complicated, multifaceted, and shaped by both pain and pleasure, success and failure. Life lived soulfully is not without its moments of darkness and periods of foolishness." Comments here on Plato's conception of techne: not solely mechanical skills, but artful managing of the craft of life. Also comments from Apuleius on the cultivation of the soul; living a richly elaborated life connected to society and nature. Also comments from Epicurus on the care for the well-being of the soul. The author calls Epicurus "much misunderstood" as he was a vegetarian who lived on simple foods, yet his name became a symbol for sensuality and gourmet eating. Also a mention here of Michel Foucault and his book The Care of the Self.
xix "Care of the soul is not solving the puzzle of life; quite the opposite, it is an appreciation of the paradoxical mysteries that blend light and darkness into the grandeur of what human life and culture can be." Comments here on avoiding the habit of thinking of issues of everyday life as "problems to be solved." "As you read this book, it might be a good idea to abandon any ideas you may have about living successfully and properly, and about understanding yourself. The human soul is not meant to be understood. Rather, you might take a more relaxed position and reflect on the way your life has taken shape... What we want to do here is reimagine those things we think we already understand.
Part I: Care of the Soul
Chapter 1: Honoring Symptoms as a Voice of the Soul
3ff On therapy and the aim of achieving happiness by removal of central problems or problem solving, contrasting with "care of the soul" which is a fundamentally different way of regarding happiness, which is not so focused on "fixing" something but more about attending, attention to details. or attending to the present moment. Comments again on Marsilio Ficino, as well as on his book The Book of Life and various of its ideas, including his emphasis on carefully choosing colors, spices, places to walk, etc., that will support the soul.
4ff On getting to know the soul; on the author's phrase "care of the soul" and what it means; concepts addressed here include things like being observant, being minimalist; on not seeking some miraculous cure; on not taking away people's problems but actually seeing the value or even the necessity of those problems; on letting your life be enriched by your flaws or the problems you're dealing with; the author gives an example of a therapy patient who wanted to become less dependent, as if dependency were a thing that could be suctioned out. Instead he helps her find ways to be dependent without feeling disempowered. [It is interesting--and a fascinating coincidence--to read this section just after having finished Emotionally Free and its discussion of the dependent, competitive and controlling personality types and how they reside in all of us to varying degrees.]
7ff On the idea of "going with the symptom"; in the case of the dependent woman patient, she thinks "being independent" means "health and happiness," but this is just a move to the opposite: thus it keeps her inside the same problem.
8ff The author gives another negative example of "dipping your toe in your fate," rather than genuinely embracing your fate, as a way of "disowning" your soul; in other words "being where you are" as the author puts it; the author here gives an example of a man who hated his job but realize when he really threw himself into it his work took it much more seriously. [This is basically the amor fati concept Nietzsche talks about ("love your fate"), also this idea is a core concept of Stoicism.]
12ff On the ideas of Paracelsus, the 16th century physician: "The physician is only the servant of nature, not her master. Therefore, it behooves medicine to follow the will of nature." On a condition like bulimia: seeing it as if it has its own will, which means curing it means following that will in some way, observing it, using non-action.
13ff Comments on the author's mentor James Hillman, the founder of archetypal psychology; on how a psychologist is a naturalist of the psyche, sort of like a botanist; comments on Freud's book The Interpretation of Dreams, where he analyzes his own dreams and arrives at a structured theory via his self-analysts analysis; the author uses the metaphor here that "We could all be a Freud to our own experiences."
14 "I often have a sense, when someone tells me anxiously about some knot they find themselves in, that what they perceive as an impossible and painful situation calling for professional intervention is simply the complexity of human life once again manifesting itself." Ideas here on appreciating complexity appreciating conflict and paradox in our lives.
16ff On the idea of looking with special attention and openness at what the individual rejects, and then speaking favorably on that rejected element. [You could think of this as like inverting or flipping it: how is my flaw or my liability actually an asset?] The author presents this idea as opposed to dividing experience into the good and the bad; on breaking the habit of branding experiences--or personal traits--as negative. The author says this is a version of Jung's theory of "the shadow": the person we choose to be necessarily includes a dark double, the person we choose not to be. "Jung thought the soul can benefit by coming to terms with both kinds of shadow, losing some of its naive innocence in the process." The author takes this even further and talks about appreciating the perverse, one's "quirks and deviances"; comments here on eccentricities, non-conformity, idiosyncrasies, the unexpected, the not so normal. As a corollary, the author talks about being suspicious of normality [Fascinating!]: "A facade of normality can hide a wealth of deviance, and besides, it is fairly easy to recognize soullessness in the standardizing of experience."
18ff On the ideas of "care" versus "cure": on cure implying the end of trouble, while care indicates "a sense of ongoing attention" where it never ends, conflicts are never fully resolved, and your character will never change radically, although it may transform. [Alfred Adler talks about this idea too: on the subtle but significant nuance that we cannot change our basic psychological nature, but we can always change our responses and actions.]
20ff Finally, comments here on how care of the soul requires a different language; that traditional academic therapy isn't enough; care of the soul can be expressed perhaps only in poetic images, or with mythology, or fine arts, or with religions of the world, or with dreams.
Part II: Care of the Soul in Everyday Life
Chapter 2: The Myth of Family and Childhood
25ff Addressing some of the implications of the concept of "dysfunction" or a "dysfunctional family"; the author begins with the word "Dis," the Roman name for the mythological underworld, and then goes into a discussion of how to apply "care of the soul" in therapy: again, not explicitly concentrating on "finding a cure" or "removing a problem" but to reflect deeply on what events have taken place in the family. "The sentimental image of family that we present publicly is a defense against the pain of proclaiming the family for what it is--a sometimes comforting, sometimes devastating house of life and memory."
29ff Comments here on shifting from the "causal thinking" of traditional therapy to "an appreciation for story and character" when caring for the soul of a family: seeing grandparents or uncles as transformed into figures of myth, or watching certain family stories become canonical through repeated tellings; on the trap of being an anthropologist or a sociologist in our own families (e.g.: "my father drank...") where the family is "etherized upon a table." On reductionist therapeutic language (e.g.: "the subject is a male with a narcissistic mother and a codependent father").
30ff Interesting thoughts here on repression: where we don't want to be like our father or a certain family member, and yet this is still a form of identification and is thus a type of repression; better to accept that these are traits we have as well and learn to work with them.
32ff Another interesting comments here about "extracting myth from the family": taking hard details of family history and memory but turning literal persons into characters in a drama, or a great saga even, and thus your family history becomes myth; the author ties this into finding myths in the ordinary roles of family life. He gives certain general examples, starting with the father as myth, referring to Homer's Odyssey and Odysseus wanting to return home to his son, his father, and his wife; on Odysseus' famous question "Does any person know who his father is?" On the Odyssey's image of "absent father neurosis": when there's no father "there is chaos, conflict, and sadness." On Odysseus' long journey home as a metaphor for the making of the father, and initiation into fatherhood.
35 "If the father seems absent in families today, that may be because he is absent as a soul figure in the society at large." [Note the irony that this book was published in 1992, right about when the advertising and media industry began running ads and sitcoms everywhere about dopey, incompetent fathers surrounded by snarky hyperintelligent daughters and Mary Sue wives who knew everything all the time, a predictibly standard and pozzed inversion of a healthy, happy family.]
39 Comments here on the breakdown of the patriarchy and how we need a return of the patriarchy: here the author takes care to clarify that he doesn't mean the "oppressing women/male domination" sense of patriarchy but "archetypal fatherhood." Also comments on the Odyssey as a metaphor for the fact that there's no shortcut to being an archetypal father or to being a father at all.
40ff On the author's mythical mental model for "mother": starting with Demeter who loses her beloved daughter Persephone, from the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. On how Hades abducts Persephone and Demeter goes in search of her. On the idea that "sometimes one discovers soul and the underworld against one's will." On how attractive things in the world act as lures to set us up for a fall; on how children can be lured to antisocial behavior; the author describes women who fall in love with dark men or are lured into sexual experimentation that they would never have considered before; he describes this as a form of abduction from within.
42ff On maternal grief as a "Demeter form of depression," citing ideas from the therapist Patricia Berry, on how Demeter lost interest in clothes, cleanliness and food when she went to see her daughter; this is a metaphor for a loss of innocence when one is pulled into the depths. Also on the metaphor of something luring us towards the depths while something else tries to pull us back into the world of familiar, wholesome values. "All mothering, whether in a family or within an individual, is made up of both affectionate caring and bitter emotional pain. Christianity gives us the great image of the Virgin Mary who is both the comforting madonna and the mater dolorosa, the sorrowful mother." [It might be worth looking up some of Patricia Berry's work: see for example her collection of writings Echo's Subtle Body: Contributions to an Archetypal Psychology.]
44ff On Demeter joining the world of the mortal, becoming a nanny for Demophon and placing him into fire to make him immortal, and becoming angry at his mother's horrified reaction. She tells his mother, "You don't know when fate is bringing you something good or something bad." The author cites this as a metaphor for seeing how certain things may look dangerous from one standpoint but are beneficial when seen from a greater perspective.
48ff On "Persephone experiences" in our lives: "I got through this period in my life, and now I'm the better for it." Also on the paradox of parents wanting to overprotect their children--even Buddha's parents tried to protect him from all human suffering--but in reality the child has to be allowed to take risks, experience failures, experience suffering and loss.
49ff Now the author moves on to the child archetype: see Jung's comment about the archetypal child "as everything that is abandoned, exposed, vulnerable, and yet divinely powerful."
51 On the error of thinking of a psychological problem that goes back to childhood, which frames childhood as something to grow out of, or that childhood is somehow the cause of all present trouble. The author describes this as the opposite of care for the soul. "The child who is eternally present in our thoughts and dreams may be full of weakness and false, but that is who we are."
52 Comments here on a book by Nicholas of Cusa [the author doesn't actually tell the reader the title of the book here, weirdly, but it's called On Learned Ignorance] addressing the idea of "beginner's mind"; the idea that we have to achieve the child's "unknowing" to have immediacy and experience; also comments on how we are made uncomfortable by the child's clumsiness or innocence: how it is tempting to deny or cover this up; the author calls this a form of repression that "only makes the child more difficult to deal with. The more we try to cover up our ignorance, the more it is displayed. The more we try to act cool and suave, the more obvious our inexperience. The more adult we try to be, the more childishness we betray."
52 Comments here on a book by Nicholas of Cusa [the author doesn't actually tell the reader the title of the book here, weirdly, but it's called On Learned Ignorance] addressing the idea of "beginner's mind"; the idea that we have to achieve the child's "unknowing" to have immediacy and experience; also comments on how we are made uncomfortable by the child's clumsiness or innocence: how it is tempting to deny or cover this up; the author calls this a form of repression that "only makes the child more difficult to deal with. The more we try to cover up our ignorance, the more it is displayed. The more we try to act cool and suave, the more obvious our inexperience. The more adult we try to be, the more childishness we betray."
52ff Comments here on the education of children: how we make them efficient parts of the machinery of society but yet neglect their soul. [The entire schooling system, from K through college, certainly does seem to produce lots of highly ludic people who lack an epistemic map for the real world.]
Chapter 3: Self-love and Its Myth: Narcissus and Narcissism
55ff Interesting comments here on the celebration of the ego and egoic health in mainstream psychology, contrasted with Jungian/archetypal psychology (as well as religion) which all warn against the ego and selfishness. Also interesting comments on how we are repulsed by narcissists, but at the same time noting Jung's idea that when we meet "the shadow" in another we often feel repulsed because this is us confronting something in ourselves that we find objectionable.
57ff On studying the myth of Narcissus as told in Ovid's Metamorphoses; how it "is not just a simple story of a boy falling in love with himself' but addresses certain nuances; see for example the prophecy from Tiresias that Narcissus will live to a ripe old age provided he never comes to know himself, as if self-knowledge somehow leads to death; also on how Narcissus is young and lovely and many people are attracted to him which fills him with "hard pride"; but a nymph, Echo, who falls in love with him has a peculiar quality that she can only speak words and phrases she has heard from someone else. "I would die before I would give my power to you," Narcissus says to Echo, and Echo repeats "I would give my power to you." She then loses her body and becomes a mere voice. [Holy cow, I knew next to nothing of Ovid's story here, I need to fill in this knowledge gap. Also it is fascinating how she gives "narcissistic supply" and becomes the enabler component of the narcissist/enabler dyad.]
58 "The echoing aspect of narcissism--the feeling that everything in the world is only a reflection of oneself--doesn't want to give away power. To respond to another or to an object in the outside world would endanger the fragile sense of power which that tight, defensive insistence on oneself maintains. Like all symptomatic behavior, narcissism reveals, in the very things it insists on, exactly what it lacks... In other words, the narcissist's display of self-love is in itself a sign that he can't find a way adequately to love himself." [Some poorly-written sentences here, but I see the author's point.]
59ff Continuing on the legend of Narcissus: he is cursed to fall in love but not have what he loves, and then he sees his reflection in a pool of water and he is mesmerized by his own reflection. The author discusses how the image Narcissus seeks is "nowhere" but yet he longs to be united with it.
62 Comments here from James Hillman, writing about longing as an important activity of the soul. On feeling separation keenly and desiring attachment; the author discusses here the idea of "healing narcissism" thanks to our a desire to be the person we imagine ourselves to be.
62ff finally Narcissus realizes the image is himself, this is a key point in the story; it's a surface image; the author then makes "a subtle point" here that "Narcissus becomes able to love himself only when he learns to love that self as an object, he now has a view of himself as someone else. This is not ego loving ego; this is ego loving the soul, loving a face the soul presents." He then mourns the death of his former self.
63 Comments here on how the Narcissus myth can be lived by seeing the pool as another person; the author offers another example of a therapy patient saying, "I think I'd like to be a therapist," which the author views as an instance where the patient sees the "image of the therapist" metaphorically "reflected in the pool" and likes it, if not loves it.
65 Finally the end of the Narcissus story: Narcissus' companions look for his body but cannot find it; in its place they find a flower like a daffodil, the Narcissus flower; the author describes this as the flowering of a personality that has broken through the "hard surface of narcissism." Comments here on the idea that suppleness is an important quality of the soul contrasted with narcissism's inflexibility and rigidity.
66ff Interesting comments here from the author on polytheism understood as a psychological model rather than (more narrowly/restrictedly) as a religious belief; how it permits more acceptance of human nature, allows us to be more able to sit with paradox and gray areas, more able to sit with our contradictory needs, or aspects of ourselves that are at war with each other,
68ff Another interesting section here where the author describes a student in one of his psychology classes who read serious books on his own, who drew people around him, but had a bad habit of repeating ideas he had heard elsewhere as though they were his own, something the author calls "one of the telltale signs of narcissism." [I'd argue that this is a problem many, many people have in the post-modern era, it might be an outgrowth of our culture's increasingly generalized narcissism.] The guy actually had a messiah complex and thought he was Jesus Christ. "I thought my student's potential for real life was as great as his narcissistic fantasies were absurd."
70 On narcissism as the Jungian "shadow" of humility. [It's interesting to digest this author's perspective on narcissism: he doesn't look at it the way that, say, Michael Trust does in his highly useful and striking book How to Deal with Narcissists, which among other things is a highly practical handbook on how to handle a toxic narcissist. Rather, Thomas Moore sees narcissism in a more paradoxical and not-as-negative way, as if it could be a manifestation of one's great dreams or one's high ideals, or a manifestation of us taking pleasure in our own talents, or where the the narcissist finds resistance to his own "myth" from the people around him, who might be thinking things like "when is he going to grow up? That young man needs to experience life and get off his high horse." All very interesting to sit with the idea that narcissism might not be as undesirable as I would have thought...]
71ff On the narcissist's shallow love of others, a weak sense of self, on the fact that the narcissist does not love himself. On the narcissist's sort of sadistic rejection of others, but also the masochism that also appears in one berating oneself or judging oneself negatively. "Even though this may look like the opposite of self-love, it is still narcissism: a focus, albeit negative, not on life and objects, but on self. The masochism may appear as a habit of self-criticism." The author gives an example here of an artist who constantly put herself down. "I suspect that if she had an image of herself as an artist, and loved it, she would be able to forget about her inferior feelings about herself and concentrate on her work."
74 Still more interesting comments here about how narcissism can be a condition not just of a person but also of architecture, art, or even the design of a city. "It's an odd thing to say, but a building may go overboard flaunting itself when its essential form is sufficient and lovable in itself."
76 Note the comment here about teachings from Renaissance "magicians: like Ficino and Pico della Mirandola [note Mirandola's work Oration on the Dignity of Man], who wrote that we need to be artists and poets of our own lives. Note also this quote: "If I hear a bit of narcissism shoot out of my mouth, I can take the clue and look for those places where I am not loving and tending my soul. The circumstances, the timing, and the particular language of my narcissism tells me exactly where to look and what to do. Oddly, I can be thankful for my narcissism, if I recognize it as such and here within it the rumblings of myth. It contains the seeds of self-acceptance and a loving attachment to the broad world."
Chapter 4: Love's Initiations
77ff On Plato's comment that love is a divine madness; on how today we talk about it love if it's something within our control, or something we can do "correctly"; on how many therapeutic patients are dealing with high expectations and rock-bottom experiences of love. On various tortures people experience when they miss out on a chance to express love.
79 Viewing love as a hint of what will come in eternity; seeing an earthly relationship as a path towards deep experiences of the soul; see for example the German Romantic-era poet Novalis who writes "love was not made for this world."
80ff On Jung writing that marriage involves four persons: the person, the lover, the anima and the animus. On Robert Burton and his 17th century self-help book The Anatomy Of Melancholy in which he writes that the only cure for the melancholic sickness of love is to enter into it with abandon. Also on the Platonic theory of love as "the soul reaching toward its proper yearnings"; see also Marsilio Ficino's book Convivium, which is his answer to Plato's Symposium. Note that the author argues that Ficino coined the phrase "platonic love."
82ff More discussion here of throwing ourselves into love rather than thinking of it as like other forms of mania, or as a disease, on Plato's "divine madness"; the author writes, "It is a relief from the stringent limits of pragmatic, sanitized life." Also exploring some of the great love stories in the western tradition, various examples here, including the Passion of Jesus, the star-crossed love of Tristan and Isolde: "illicit lovers in a threatening, castigating world." On "the unavoidable tendency of the soul to get itself into love trouble." "Care of the soul means respecting its emotions and fantasies, however objectionable."
85ff On "the extraordinary French writer" Georges Bataille, who claims every love involves a transgression. Also note the author's comment here: "One of the difficulties in care of the soul is to recognize the necessity of pathos and tragedy." The author returns to Tristan, describing him as in a state of complete trust of his fate as it unfolds towards tragedy and sadness; the author tells us to see Tristan is a figure of our sadness in love, not as a representative of failure in love; that we should not dismiss feelings of sadness, that it brings us a unique wisdom.
87ff On rethinking separation: a case study here of a woman who urgently needed to separate from her husband but then went back to him; in reality she needed to separate from her family; also note the vaguely related comments here on the idea of separation as an alchemic concept that Jung interpreted metaphorically: as a primary activity in creation and an essential step in turning ordinary materials into gold.
89ff Considering the "shadow" of love: separation, loss of hope in the relationship, or unexpected changes in your partner, as opposed to focusing just on the sentimental, romantic or the positive side of love, which the author calls "a partial view" of love with impossible ideals.
90ff On the story of Admetus, to whom Apollo offered a way to sidestep death: he could ask someone to take his place and die for him, and his wife Alkestis agreed to take his place and die for him. One reading of this myth is to see it as a wife taking the role of giving up her life for her husband, but the author sees it as more like the death of Narcissus in his pool as it takes us out of our life and away from the plans we have made for ourselves. Also on the idea of submission, which "entails a loss in life, but there is also a gain for the soul." On how giving oneself over to love and marriage is a type of death or a type of loss, a loss of control or will on some level; also on how submitting to the demans of love contradicts our "need to be in charge."
92 Interesting comments here on the idea of a "veiled soul": the idea that when Admetus' wife Alkestis returns from the land of death after she was rescued by Herakles, she returns wearing a veil over her face; the author draws a parallel here to rescuing someone from depression by using drugs--but then the person is not really among the living but has the face of a zombie. The author ties this in to the idea of embracing your fate, returning to the amor fati idea, as he encourages us to to find something Alkestis-like in ourselves that is willing to undergo "whatever fate is asking of the soul."
92ff On the soul's need for community: a case study here of a female patient who was gregarious yet lonely, who was guarded around others; also Comments on the idea from Erasmus in his book In Praise of Folly that people are joined in friendship through their foolishness.
94 On the idea of having feelings of relatedness and relating to people; you belong to the world not by joining groups but living through these feelings of relatedness. [This sounds a lot like Alfred Adler's idea of conviviality.]
95 Note this "mysterious" quote from Jung's prologue to his memoirs: "Other people are established inalienably in my memories only if their names were entered in the scrolls of my destiny from the beginning, so that encountering them was at the same time a kind of recollection." [Reading this quote, I wonder if Robert Monroe read Jung too....]
Chapter 5: Jealousy and Envy: Healing Poisons
97ff "The stone the builders reject becomes the cornerstone." The idea here is that we have to sit with and accept corrosive feelings like jealousy and envy; they are common experiences. A quick definition of both words: envy is a desire for what another person has; jealousy is a fear the other person will take what we have.
98ff Comments on the play Hippolytus by Euripides, in which Aphrodite is enraged as the young man Hippolytus dedicates himself to the Artemis, the goddes of purity and chastity; Hippolytus ignores Aphrodite's domain of love and sex, he's more devoted devoted to his horses and his animals. Aphrodite says, "I stir up trouble for any who ignore me." The author interprets this as a type of Freudian observation, meaning basically "repress sexuality and you are in for trouble." The play is a triangle of jealousy between two goddesses and a mortal, the author draws from this that we mistakenly think of jealousy as an emotion we can control with our will and our understanding, but this is a struggle that runsfar deeper than rational understanding can reach. Even the gods are jealous, thus our experience of jealousy is archetypal.
102 "What do you know about yourself that in your jealousy you are not admitting?" This is an interesting meta-question the author asks a young male therapy patient who was consumed with jealousy over a co-worker to the point where he was thrown into rages; the author calls him another Hippolytus.
104ff Apotropaic: magical or ritual ways of warding off evil. In the case of this young man, he is assuming the role of an innocent child in order to ward off an acceptance of his jealousy, thus he can avoid entering the complicated world of relationships with others. He solves for his jealousy and his jealous rages by simply being hurt. Comments here on coming to terms with jealousy, on using it like a detective to draw out and study more about the self. "The obsessive side of jealousy seems in part to be a function of its hiddenness."
105 Interesting comment here on what the author and this patient explored in therapy: "We were not looking for a vital clue that would explain it and dispel it." [They weren't looking for that "one key reason" that explains everything, they weren't approaching it from a smart-boy perspective.] "The jealous person discovers new ways of thinking and a fresh appreciation for the complicated demands of love." The young man was like Hippolytus in the sense that he wanted to spend time with his friends and his horses and avoid women. He sort of saw it as a form of purity, or high-minded values, and he wasn't able to "see his own shadow of haughtiness and misogyny."
106ff Comments here on Hera who is often bursting into jealous rages over her husband Zeus, "an archphilanderer." [The JFK of gods!] On some level it seems reasonable for the governor of the universe to want erotic attachment with everything in the world. But what would it be like to be a wife to this person? Perhaps like being the wife of or mistress of a politician with tremendous power and charisma. [Thus the Hillary Clinton of gods.] The author also frames Hera and Zeus as "Zeus going out into the world" while "Hera represents the home, family and marriage," a type of yin/yang, extrovert/ introvert dynamic. Comments on Hera's possessiveness: this is part of true connection and intimacy with another person, "the tension between having and not having another."
108ff On Hera is the archetype of wife; on the aspect of dependency in a relationship or the dependent element in a partnership. "If in a marriage one of the partners is clearly the wife--and it's not always the woman--then Hera is not being honored." [There's always a top and a bottom I guess.]
110 More comments here about sitting with various tensions in relationships: between home and away, between your relationship and the normalcy of having attractions to other people or other activities. The author gives some examples of dreams that present these types of tensions; the tension between attachment to what is and the promise of a new passion, not even a passion necessarily for another person.
111ff Mention here of Karl Kerenyi, historian and friend of Carl Jung; on Kerenyi's book Zeus and Hera; on how Hera is fulfilled in lovemaking; on how Hera and Zeus had a 300-year honeymoon; on how Hera renewed her virginity each year in the spring and presents herself again to Zeus as a girl. That Hera is part of the "anima" of sex in Jungian language; the problem is you can't have Hera without her full nature, including her jealousy, her wifehood, her feelings of inferiority and dependence; thus we have to appreciate the wife archetype and all the feelings that come with it.
113ff Comments here on envy; "serious shadow material" as the author puts it; one of the seven deadly sins; the author asks how can we give this deadly sin "an open-minded hearing?" On using envy to help guide the soul back to its own fate, how "it makes us stop and take notice of something that has gone wrong and needs attention."
114ff An interesting therapeutic example here where the describes an envious woman who had controlling behaviors around her two adult-age sons, while her life was consumed from within by envy of the happiness and successes of others; she also had inhibitions about sex and money as well as many stories of deprivation from her life; the author here talks about having her understand what her envy was doing in her, "what it had in mind"; also noteworthy concepts here of sitting with one's own sense of desolation and emptiness rather than having a compensatory move into positive thinking. [There's nothing wrong with positive thinking but not if you are in total denial about your reality.]
116ff Also avoiding dwelling in an imaginary life with illusions of other people's successes or fantasies of your own life. Also on how both jealousy and envy are resistant to reason and can't be eradicated, and on thinking about this as a blessing--that it leads to life experience with greater depth.
Chapter 6: The Soul and Power
119ff This chapter starts out discussing a dichotomy of power: 1) the heroic or Herculean, which is our own egoistic strength and effort, versus 2) the power of the soul which is like the force of water, more natural and organic, and from an unknown source. Also on the idea that "the soul has intentions and necessities that we may understand only partially."
120ff On Jung's concept of the "transcendent function" which the author characterizes as "a point of view that embraces the mysterious depths of the soul as well as conscious understanding and intention." This was how Jung defined the self: both the soul and the intellect acting as a fulcrum of action and intelligence. On the idea of how to tap into this "soul power": on living close to the heart; this power can emerge from failure or loss, "it appears in gaps and holes of experience." [It sounds like the idea here is this power appears organically; it's sort of a "path of least resistance" idea, where water simply flows and finds its level, it can't be forced or reverse by strength of will alone.] On simply being good at what you're good at; not trying to be something we are not.
122ff Intriguing section here about how the soul works, how it uses "a different kind of math and logic," doing things in the easiest way or in some sort of counterintuitive way; the author cites two Sufi stories here: one where a person goes for music lessons; the first lesson is $15, each lesson after that costs $10. So, the student says, "I'll begin with lesson number two." The author cites this as an example of beating the game not from effort or even fairness but more with magic. And then a second story about a man who is told by his servant that his wife is acting suspiciously next to a huge chest large enough to hold a man. The husband at first thinks about just opening the chest, but then he decides to take it with his four gardeners and bury it far away from their estate. The author cites this as a possible extended metaphor of hiding away something you'd rather not see, or a partnership agreeing to not discuss something or leave something private; the author gives another example here of a man who wrote a rash and hurtful letter to his lover and actually mailed it to her, but he asked her to not read the letter; despite her curiosity, she tore it up and didn't read it. Thus they "left the chest closed and buried" in this example. "In general, we keep our power when we protect the power of others."
126ff Comments here on violence, how it "would be a mistake to approach violence with any simple idea of getting rid of it" as this would likely cut us off from "the deep power that sustains creative life... The repressed always returns in monstrous form." [Once again, these are really useful insights on sitting with a duality, sitting with the pros and cons of something, seeing it not necessarily as something totally bad but rather that it serves some function; this is a helpful basic mindset to use for any mental state or emotion.] The author talks about how most of the emotional problems people present in therapy are forms of "repression of the life force" which is also why expressing anger is something therapist encourage patients to do.
127ff The author draws a connection here--a rather tortured one--between violence and "life force"; he discusses the idea of unleashing our life force versus being sedated in the repetitious "flatness and predictability of modern life." The idea here is of the god Mars, where originality, violence, passion and one's individuality comes from.
129 "When Mars is overlooked and undervalued, he is forced to appear in fetish and in violent behavior... There is nothing neutral about the soul. It is the seat and the source of life. Either we respond to what the soul presents in its fantasies and desires, or we suffer from this neglect of ourselves."
129ff Discussion here of sadomasochism, which arises when the soul's power is neglected or toyed with; the author describes a spectrum ranging from extreme clinical syndromes to a dynamic at work in ordinary simple transactions;l comments on power dynamics between a controller and subject, or between violence and victimization; on how this looks like genuine strength, but it's really a failure of power; on the paradox of how people who turn to a violence are visibly controlling but they also have feelings of powerlessness and weakness. Likewise people who play the victim are using their own subtle methods of control. "This is why issues of power are so difficult to deal with: things are not as they appear to be."
131 Note the mention here of David Miller, which sent me down a rabbit hole, including the striking audio archive of his sermons.
132ff Extended discussion here of guns and the symbolism of guns: guns as a ritual object; as both fascinating and disturbing; the gun as a phallic symbol, but likewise the reverse--the phallus as a gun symbol; other various paradoxes about guns, like some of them are named after women (e.g., Big Bertha, etc.).
135ff On how it is foolish to deny signs of the soul's power; this is where individuality, eccentricity, self-expression, and passion come from, and these things cannot truly be repressed. On how some of the soul's power comes from its shadow qualities. The author's idea here is that "we have to give up all pretenses to innocence" if we wish to live from our soul, if we with to live with passion, intensity, forcefulness and courage; when we neglect this side of ourselves we suffer from the results of the repression of that violence and force.
Chapter 7: Gifts of Depression
137ff On accepting the "gray and black" in our soul, not just the bright colors; the author cites the colorizing of old black and white films as sort of modernity's general "rejection of the dark and the gray." On the importance of appreciating and observing how the soul presents itself: if we're in a state of depression, for example, we might ask "What is it [the depression] doing here? Does it have some necessary role to play?... Melancholy gives the soul an opportunity to express a side of its nature that is as valid as any other, but is hidden out of our distaste for its darkness and bitterness."
138ff On the terms "sadness" and "melancholy" versus the modern word "depression": on melancholy's connection to the Roman god Saturn; on melancholic thoughts for days gone by, for the past. Also comments on the benefits of age and experience, these are also qualities of Saturn.
140ff On considering depression as simply another state of being, "neither good nor bad, something the soul does in its own good time and for its own good reasons," rather than seeing depression as a problem that needs to be eradicated. On entering into depression's moods and thoughts rather than trying to escape it or find a way out of it. [Once again this is the theme of sitting with things, seeing these things as having a purpose, rather than having them "fixed."]
142 More here of ideas from Nicholas of Cusa, here talking about how we must acknowledge our ignorance of life's most profound things, thus we should acknowledge our ignorance of depression too.
144ff Some interesting language used here: the author is talking about how people "strong in anima" are "wet," meaning they're so emotionally involved in life that it's difficult for them to step back and see what is actually going on; the idea here is to look at one's life from "the far off regions of cold-dry Saturn." Ideas here also about reflecting on your past with some distance and detachment.
146ff On speaking clinically of depression as a behavioral or emotional condition versus imagining depression as "a visitation by Saturn"; this is a mental model where we can see a need perhaps for isolation or for distilling our memories, or deeply experiencing feelings of regret or loss. "If we pathologize depression, treating it as a syndrome in need of cure, then the emotions of Saturn have no place to go except into abnormal behavior and acting out. An alternative would be to invite Saturn in, when he comes knocking, and give him an appropriate place to stay."
148ff Extended discussion here of a priest the author knew who was accused of wrongdoing. was unfairly kicked out of his diocese. and then settled into a depression; the author frames the man's depression as a transition period from a less naive person and a less easily manipulated person into a more savvy and almost more adult person; the idea here is rather than to cure his depression or treat his symptoms, it was better to see "what the depression was telling him" and respond. "Care of the soul doesn't mean wallowing in the symptom, but it does mean trying to learn from depression what qualities the soul needs."
Chapter 8: The Body's Poetics of Illness
155ff Criticizing the idea of looking at the body as abstracted into graphs, charts, numbers; critiquing looking at the body in terms of its function or any kind of malfunction, rather than considering the body's inherent art. The author relates a conversation he has with an allopathic-style doctor about fixating on his cholesterol numbers. [Recall this book came out in 1992, making the author early to question this!]
157ff Note the comments here on James Hillman as well Hillman's "colleague" Robert Sardello [both have written a number of books that might be worth looking at].
158f On Marsilio Ficino's observation that Mars dissolves the intestines--another way of saying there's a connection between repressed anger and colitis. Also comments here on a poetic response to the body or to illness; where science makes one-dimensional interpretations, poetry never stops interpreting; it is constantly seeing connections; also on the movement to not "blame" patients for their physical problems as another factor that is limiting us from having a more "metaphoric" view of disease. "Rather than blame, we can respond. Listening to the messages of the body is not the same as blaming the patient."
160ff The author has a pain in his side; he shares how he studied it, how he "went into" the pain. [I think specifically with pain it is very much worth reading Dr. John Sarno's book The Divided Mind, which talks about all the strange neurological machinery in our bodies that causes pain to manifest, often with no "reason" or physical cause.]
163ff A very unusual idea here of Sandor Ferenczi, a colleague of Sigmund Freud; on Ferenczi's concept of "organ eroticism" that basically our body parts take pleasure in what they do; the organ doesn't just work but it "enjoys itself"; the author really runs with this idea and talks to his own kidneys: "Are you relaxed? Are you enjoying your activity today? Or am I doing something that is making you depressed?"
164ff On thinking of illness or disease as a failure of the body to find its pleasure; using ideas from Ficino as well as Epicurus on using restraint but also enjoyment of a simple life; the author refers here to harsh sounds or pseudomusic like Muzak, or the stomach taking no pleasure "in frozen and powdered foods." [This might be analogous to Thich Nhat Han's idea of avoiding bad nutriments from The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching]; also note the interesting idea here where the author talks about using your body in a "culturally numbing" way: like using your brain as "just a computer" or thinking of the heart as "just a pump"; the idea here is to avoid thinking of your organs merely in terms of their bare function. [Interesting!] The author talks about this as regarding the body with "a poverty of imagination."
166ff Comments here on the fifth book of the Iliad, where the gods are wounded, the author quotes Jung here as saying "the gods have now returned to us in our diseases." Also on the gods bearing the burden of our compulsions; and then on ideas like the Christian doctrine of original sin or the Buddhist idea of the Four Noble Truths, which "teach that human life is wounded in its essence, and suffering is the nature of things." [One could take this even further along in the spiritual domain and consider Elder Porphyrios' book Wounded by Love, or St. John of the Cross' work The Dark Night of the Soul as works addressing suffering and overcoming obstacles on the soul's journey towards the divine.]
167 The author attempts to put some of these scattered ideas together here, saying, "If the gods appear in our diseases, and if the gods are wounded in our Iliadic battles (life's warfare), then it makes no sense to avoid life in order to avoid its wounds. We could find new, deep value in illness, without masochistically indulging in it. We could risk the battle. In our psychological lives, too, we could hold off our palliatives and our techniques for relieving suffering long enough to find a god who has been struck and to re-establish harmony in our relation to that god."
167ff Discussion here of Karl Kerenyi's book on Asklepios, referring to an image of a doctor treating a man's shoulder, where a snake is touching the man's shoulder with its mouth; the image suggests "treatments physicians employ on the physical plane have counterparts in the soul." The idea here is that the the illness has a counterpart in our spiritual life. Further comments here on accepting the idea that illness is universal; there's a discussion of a dream here reported by a female MD, discussing with two other doctos a disease that everyone was going to get; one of the doctors saw it as an opportunity to experience the symptoms; on the idea that a doctor should not distance himself from the illness; note this interesting comment here about the author's own psychotherapy practice: "As a psychotherapist, if I distance myself defensively from the problems my clients bring to me, I force them to carry universal illness while I try to have power over the disease in order to be protected from it." On instead being more like Paracelsus or Ficino, knowing that medicine is more art than science and art plays an important role in the practice of medicine.
170ff Reference here again to Novalis, on his quote "Every disease is a musical problem. Its cure, a musical solution. The more rapid and complete the solution, the greater the musical talent of the doctor." The author mentions that great physicians were often also musicians, on how they would have concern for the rhythms, discords and concords of the body and soul; note also the author's quote here from Paracelsus: "The disease desires its wife, that is, the medicine. The medicine must be adjusted to the disease, both must be united to form a harmonious whole, just as in the case of man and woman." On applying this idea to modern medicine and listening to our bodies, noticing dreams that occur, on toning down the aggressive interventions of modern medicine; on thinking of our diseases "poetically" and attuning our lives such that we can be "corrected by the disease."
171ff On the Florentine 15th century idea of viewing the body as a manifestation of the soul versus the modern idea of seeing the body as an efficient machine that needs to be kept in shape so that it will function smoothly, and if something goes wrong that "part" can be replaced with a mechanical substitute; on viewing our body as having soul rather than being purely a machine. The author notes the paradigm of modern thinking on exercise, that we should hit a certain rate of heart rate for a certain numbers of minutes, or which muscles to focus on, etc., and compares it to Ficino writing 500 years ago "You should walk as often as possible among plants that have a wonderful aroma, spending a considerable amount of time every day among such things." The author also quotes Emerson on walking through fields and woods. Also discussion here of yoga which the author considers soul-oriented.
174ff Finally on viewing the body as a collection of or an inexhaustible source of "signs" rather than just a collection of facts. "Will the day come when Paracelsus, Ficino, and Emerson will be high on the list of required reading for medical students?"
Chapter 9: The Economics of Soul: Work, Money, Failure, and Creativity
177ff On how "ordinary" things of daily life require soul as well; on how work, our work setting, our perspective on work can be often the most unconscious of our daily activities; our work is often dominated by function and efficiency and thus neglects the soul. Note the tangent here where the author goes to a woman's house to "read" her home [this is part of a discussion of the concept of liber mundi, basically seeing the world as a sort of spiritual book to be read and understood]; the author notes her immaculate bathroom; comments here on having the soul involved in housework; on how we should not denigrate work to be done around the house, whether it's cooking or laundry, or else we lose our attachment to the immediate world; the author really waxes poetic here: "the scrub brush is a sacramental object"; discussion here on cleaning as a form of therapy, on doing our chores "attentively and with an eye to detail."
180ff On work as opus, or vocation, or calling: on Christian and Zen monasteries where work is part of the monk's life just as much as prayer and meditation and liturgy are; on work as "an important component of the spiritual life... Monastic writers describe work as a path to holiness. ...work is not the secular enterprise the modern world assumes it is." Various other etymological discussions of work: "occupation" and its connotations of being taken or seized; "vocation" as work we are called to. Also on liturgy, the category of rituals taking place in church, where the word liturgy translates to the labor of the laity, "all work is liturgy... We could say, then, it all work as sacred, whether you were building a road, cutting a person's hair, or taking out the garbage."
182ff Interesting comments here about showing more reverence to work, making it more sacred: examples here of buying tools of high quality that are well made and pleasing to look at, or using a tablecloth that ritualizes a dinner, or having an office or desk with a certain design or certain qualities that transform the workplace; Interesting comments here also on how forms of work that were seen as ordinary (like carpentry, gardening, secretarial services) each had a patron god.
184ff On Jung and his work with alchemy which the author claim enriches our imagination about work; on the Neoplatonist idea that "ordinary life is the means of entry into higher spiritual activity." Also quoting Jung here in his book Psychology and Religion: West and East, "The soul is for the most part outside the body." The idea here is that the soul is in the world, thus work is a truly important aspect of our lives.
186ff Comments on how narcissism invades our work when we seek the glow of achievement; we become distracted from the soul aspect of work and instead find (false) rewards in secondary things like money or prestige. How climbing the ladder of success can lead easily to a loss of soul.
188ff On a harmonious correspondence with work as an "opus"; where work is easier and more satisfying because the soul is involved; the work is done from a deeper place, not just carried out by the ego alone. [Note also the comment here about Giorgio Vasari's book Lives of the Artists, probably a book work reading.]
189ff Comments here on money: how it can be a focus of a job's narcissism; how money can replace pleasure in our work; but also how money can be part of work without a loss of soul as well; the author discusses money here as a component of a communal life, but with all the complications of soul: that it can fill us with envy or greed or desire. Comments on a neurotic way of dealing with money that intensifies our other problems, say, for example, as a defense against poverty: a person with an attitude toward money as a defense against poverty will never truly experience wealth. Other ironies about money, like how a monk might take a vow of poverty, but in a monastery be surrounded by beautiful furnishings or buildings.
191ff The author likens money to sex in that it can be craved or fetishized, and even great quantities of it don't satisfy one's cravings.
193 Note the author's interesting offhand comment here about dreams: "First impressions about your own dreams are often one-sided and shallow." In this section he's talking when he dreamed he was mugged for his money; a man put a knife against his back and said, "Give me your change," and the author had $200 in his right pocket but $15 in is left, and so he gave the man what was in his left pocket and the man took it and ran off. "Maybe the ego in the dream was too clever." Then the author asks himself a series of open-ended, free-association-style questions about what the dream might mean, likewise in an interesting way.
195ff Comments here on how we tend to respond to money either apotropaically (shunning its power) or compulsively. "An alternative is to enter into the particular fantasies that money gives us and see what messages they might offer." [Again a good example of meta-questions: "going into the problem," thinking open-mindedly and in a free associating way about the problem; this is a good tool to use to think about different problems that you may face in various life domains such that you can solve them in creative ways that often aren't always obvious right away.]
196ff Comments on failure in work, which is "a surprising source of potential soul in our work." It can act as an antidote for overly high expectations; also thoughts on how perfection belongs to an imaginary world; the author even likens failure in this domain to the Incarnation, a type of gesture of descent. [Heavy!] On experiencing "the feelings of inferiority and humbling occasioned by failure as meaningful in their own right." Comments on viewing failure as a necessity; viewing it "alchemically" so that it teaches us to not identify so much with our inabilities; also on thinking of failure as a mystery: it's not yours, rather it's an element of the work you're doing; the author contrasts this to falling into narcissistic fantasies of success/dismal feelings of failure.
197ff On creativity which is a source of soul in our work lives: how even periods of depression can be "creative time" using the saturnine conception of depression. The author cites Carl Jung and his period of "falling apart," a period that Jung called "a state of disorientation" that turned out to be a period during which he conceived some of his fundamental psychological insights. "Creativity finds its soul when it embraces its shadow."
198-9 Mention here of Igor Stravinsky and his Harvard lectures [which can be found in the book Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons]. On Stravinsky's comments on how workmanship was better in Bach's time; how"Now have only talent" and how he was "was suspicious of the artist as a pure channel of inspiration." More quotes from Stravinsky: "Should the impossible happen and my work suddenly be given to me in a perfectly completed form, I should be embarrassed and nonplussed by it, as by a hoax." [This is strikingly anti-modernity in mindset, quite frankly it's amazing to hear Stravinsky say this. I should look more into Stravinsky and his thinking.] The author takes these ideas and writes how creative work can be exciting, inspiring and godlike, but also quotidian, humdrum and full of anxieties, dead ends, mistakes and failures. And that this is how we do our daily work, making our homes and marriages, raising children, etc. "The ultimate work, then, is an engagement with soul, responding to the demands of fate and tending the details of life as it presents itself. We may get to a point where our external labors and the opus of the soul are one and the same, inseparable. Then the satisfactions of our work will be deep and long lasting, undone neither by failures nor by flashes of success."
Part III: Spiritual Practice and Psychological Depth
Chapter 10: The Need for Myth, Ritual, and a Spiritual Life
203ff Some interesting quotes and phrasings here: "Like an animal, the soul feeds on whatever life grows in its immediate environment. To the soul, the ordinary is sacred and the everyday is the primary source of religion. But there is another side to this issue. The soul also needs spirituality, and as Ficino advises, a particular kind of spirituality: one that is not at odds with the everyday and the lowly." Comments on how the soul benefits from a vivid spiritual life and suffers when it is deprived of it. How it needs a carefully articulated worldview, a relatedness to the whole. "It needs a myth of immortality and an attitude toward death."
204 Comments here on a woman client of the author who dreamt that her esophagus was made of plastic but wasn't long enough to reach her stomach; the author saw this as a perfect description of the modern world: our means of connecting do not reach deep enough; also he notes the unnatural substance of plastic here as well, suggesting that the soul's function--to connect the outside world into the interior, or to feed, nurture or nourish--isn't performed properly with the artificial material; the soul thus cannot feed on life and digest it, "creating wisdom and character out of the fodder of experience." [Very interesting.]
205ff On asceticism, which is an important part of spirituality, but also can be driven to extremes as a sort of neurosis; the author likens the woman's plastic esophagus dream to the idea of anorexia here. And then also the idea of food as a metaphor for communion with the the divine, contrasting this with the modern metaphor of eating fast food; food that's not a real substance; also extending the metaphor even further to a "soundbite" an idea of consuming bad informational nutrients. "Culturally we have a plastic esophagus, suited perhaps to fast food and fast living, but not conducive to soul, which thrives only when life is taken in in a long, slow process of digestion and absorption."
206ff On the author's concept of "psychological modernism": an uncritical acceptance of the values of the modern world, including things like blind faith in technology, attachment to gadgets, uncritical acceptance of the march of scientific progress, devotion to electronic media, a lifestyle dictated by advertising, etc. [If I were to add my own items to this list I would say 1) demanding comfort (or the inability to tolerate discomfort), 2) lack of literacy, in particular of the ancients, and 3) a pathological willingness to have your knowledge (or worse, your wisdom) selected and pre-chewed for you by "experts."] The author describes other examples where a modern person comes into therapy and wants to "fix" their problem: "Tell me what I have to do and I'll do it"--as if you're assuming the psyche has spare parts that any mechanic can fix. Also interesting comments here from the author on how there is "an inverse relationship between information and wisdom."
208ff A discussion of a retreat from the modern world: see Carl Jung and the stone tower he built over time as a dwelling for himself, without electricity, lit with oil lamps, with no running water, where he chops the wood and cooks his food himself. In his memoirs Jung writes that this tower was where he formed much of his thinking and recorded many of his visions. On the idea of creating your own metaphorical "stone tower" in the form of a room or a corner of your house which is a retreat from the modern world. Also comments on how Jung felt connected to his ancestors in his stone tower and how he wrote (in what the author calls a "remarkable passage") "I feel very strongly that I am under the influence of things or questions which were left incomplete and unanswered by my parents and grandparents and more distant ancestors." [It's all the more striking that I happen to be reading this passage on creating a retreat from modernity at the very time I'm doing my own annual "retreat" to the North Carolina coast where my wife and I rent a beach house from time to time; this is a place where I sit and do a lot of reading and thinking while staring at the ocean.]
210ff The author talks about different ways to think about this "retreat" idea, ranging from going to a monastery, following the ascetics and going into the desert; also on avoiding doing these things in a way that is escapist but rather doing them in a way that is soulful; also on having a personal or physical expression of "retreat": the author gives examples of a drawer where you can store dreams and thoughts; or a routine like spending five minutes every morning writing, or documenting your dreams, or reflecting on the day ahead, or spending time in nature, rather than, say, going to the mall or watching TV. "These are modest forms of retreat that serve the spiritual needs of the soul."
211ff On the loss of formal religious practice in modern life, which "deprives the soul of valuable symbolic and reflective experience." Interesting comments here about the idea of resuming your childhood religious tradition for the religion you were brought up in, but also how many people struggle to do this because it seems "too naive" or too simple-minded to you, or it brings up a painful past experiences. The author brings up the idea of reform in a very broad sense of the term, like how Zen emerged out of Taoism or Buddhism, or how Jesus brought a new law out of the old, or various reform movements in Judaism; he then translates this idea of reform to the individual reflecting this dynamic in how they choose to practice their own spirituality. The author describes his Irish Catholic upbringing where he was encouraged to become a priest, but during his theology studies "I was reading Paul Tillich and Teilhard de Chardin more passionately than the typical seminary textbooks." In a sense he was "reforming" his own theological views and so he left the seminary. [This next passage is quite striking]: But then, years later, he has an odd, quasi-spiritual experience working in a chemical lab, as one of the brilliant young chemists he worked with tells him in a strange prophetic tone, "You will always do the work of a priest," and then says, "Don't forget what I'm saying today." "I didn't forget." The author writes here that this experience is still a mystery to him, and yet he went on to get a PhD in religion and now practices as a therapist writing about transforming psychotherapy by recovering a religious tradition... which is literally the work of a priest.
214ff On church and religion as a symbolic reminder to sustain mindfulness about the holiness or presence in everything we do. You can go to church to "get" your religion--note here how the author essentially says we then basically forget about it for the rest of the week--or you can have the church show you the sacred dimensions of everyday life. Note the mention here of Lynda Sexson's book Ordinarily Sacred that the author calls "extraordinary."
216ff Interesting section here where the author talks about a fashion model client who felt she was getting old at age 29. "Growing old is one of the ways the soul nudges itself into attention to the spiritual aspects of life. The body's changes teach us about fate, time, nature, mortality, and character. Aging forces us to decide what is important in life."
217 The author asks the fashion model client "Do you ever dream?" and then makes a few interesting comments about how dreams help with self-understanding, how people don't get very far when they try to understand themselves consciously, or take a psychological test or whatever. "Dreams are different. They are a person's own mythology and imagery. They are not easy to understand, but that very fact makes them a good starting point for reflection. As we study our dreams over a period of time, we begin to see patterns and recurring images that offer deeper insight than any standardized test or instant self-analysis can approximate... Sometimes dreams are like Japanese haiku or short lyric poems. You have to sit with them the way you would with a miniature painting or a little piece of verse." The woman's dream is about her being in a restaurant eating thin white crepes, but when she lifted the crepes up with a fork she saw two green peas underneath. The author goes through various symbolic interpretations. Later the model calls him to tell him that she's pregnant; she begins to change her priorities and develop herself more.
219ff The author makes a reference to Aristophanes's play The Frogs, which is about finding a poet in the underworld to help a city languishing from an era of poor poetry; he argues "We have lost a certain depth in the way we understand our experiences, using language that is often doubletalk and shallow, like the offering of Euripides in hell, in order to describe complex and profound aspects of life." The author talks here about reviving a sense of myth, how it gives us archetypes, eternal factors, basically things that are not literal or factual to describe fundamental truths of human life.
222ff Interesting comments here on modern psychological interpretations of mythology, the author is cautious about them: "...we don't want to reduce the mysteries contained in myth to modern language and concepts that are already insufficient..." The author warns "not to shrink mythology to our own concepts. Rather, mythology could enlarge our psychological thinking to include the mysteries at work in human life that will never be fully explained." Also note the comments here on Jung advising us to turn to traditional mythology to amplify themes and mythological elements that are special to us.
224ff On ritual, which is "in tandem" with myth, an "action that speaks to the mind and heart but doesn't necessarily make sense in a literal context." Comments here on letting go of the dominant role of function in so many things we do; also comments on how neurosis and psychosis often take the form of compulsive ritual, the author posits the idea that these neurotic rituals appear when our imagination has been lost and the soul is ignored, they signify a loss of ritual and daily life. "The cure for neurotic ritualism could be the cultivation of a more genuine sense of ritual in our daily life." It's interesting here how the author takes this idea to an extreme example comparing the soullessness of stamped out mass-produced products to the soulful nature of, say, handmade carvings with elaborate faces and bodies carved into them. [Interesting.]
227ff On the idea of relics of a family: the author talks about literal relics of saints' bones kept in the Catholic altar; he also talks to various rituals and sacred items in the Catholic liturgy: the sacred book on the altar, the rubrics (the red letter instructions explaining how to perform a rite precisely). The author connects this idea to his own everyday life, discussing his own attention to everyday "rubrics" that describe "the special way things ought to be done." Also on the concept the author learned in theology class that the ritual is effective ex opere operato ["by the work performed"] rather than because of the intentions of the person performing the rite. He describes this in a context of genuine ritual versus "playing" at ritualism, in other words doing something in a genuine, mindful manner or doing it in a superficial manner, or putting the personal intentions or preferences of the person first rather than placing the ritual and the traditions itself first. [Again, extremely interesting.]
Chapter 11: Wedding Spirituality and Soul
231ff Interesting introductory thoughts here: "No one needs to be told that we live in a time of materialism and consumerism, of lost values and a shift in ethical standards. We find ourselves tempted to call for a return to old values and ways. It seems that in the past we were more religious as a people and that traditional values had more influence throughout the society. But whether or not that is a blurry, nostalgic view of the past, we want to keep in mind Jung's warning about dealing with present difficulties by wishing for a return to former conditions. He calls this maneuver a "regressive restoration of the persona." Societies can fall into this defensive strategy, attempting to restore what is imagined to be a better condition from the past."
233 Reference here to Tracy Kidder's book The Soul of a New Machine, describing the "monks" involved in the early development of the computer, all deeply "caught up in the spirit of their work."
233ff Comments here on how the intellect wants to "know"; how it wants to live in a "known world" versus a world full of unconscious elements or surprises. Also note the author's comment about James Hillman who "observed that when our spirituality isn't sufficiently profound, it sometimes sneaks out a backdoor and takes on bizarre forms, all kinds of strange enthusiasms."
234ff The author repurposes the word "fundamentalism" here is in an interesting way, as a sort of objection to discussing subtleties or paradoxes of something. "The intellect wants a summary meaning." A discussion here of the early Christian theologians looking at biblical texts at many levels at once: literal, allegorical, anagogical [focusing on death and the afterlife]; for example, seeing the story of the Exodus as an allegory of freeing the soul from imprisonment in sin. The author describes this as looking as Bible stories as subtle expression of the mysteries of human life, contrasting it with a more simplistic view of Bible stories as moral lessors or statements of belief.
236 Note the author's offhand comment a major convocation between the Eastern and Western churches in Florence during the Renaissance: this sent me down a fascinating politico-theological rabbit hole, see photo below. Note the cross-fertilization of ideas that happened at this convocation, see for example Pico della Mirandola who was inspired to write his Poetic Theology because of it.
236ff On other forms of "fundamentalism": democrat/republican, Jungian/Freudian; also comments on how we have "fundamentalist" stories about ourselves that we believe in "devotedly"; these stories are usually so familiar that it is difficult for us to see through them on our own. "They are so convincing and believable that they lead to resolutions and axioms that are very much like religious moral principles, except that they have been developed individually." The author talks about opening up these stories to look at their subtleties and layers of meaning, and even their contradictions and poetic forms. On avoiding a reduction of rich details into some overarching, declarative conclusion.
240 Note the mention of Ingmar Bergman's film Fanny and Alexander, which contrasts the vitality and fun of family life with the gray depressive life under a rigid authoritarian bishop; showing fundamentalism versus its opposite. The author also cites Thomas Merton who lived in a hermitage, but was known for humor and laughter; also Saint Thomas More, who wore a hairshirt but also was a man of great wit. [Henri Nouwen discusses Thomas Merton's work in chapter 2 and 3 of his book Reaching Out in quite a striking way.]
240ff The author goes through different examples of spirituality in a broad sense: placenames, like where George Washington slept for example, a place where there is a sort of special spirit attached to that place; also family as a source and focus for spirituality: for example your ancestors, family gatherings, family rites and even family keepsakes; see also also polytheistic religions which have gods and goddesses representations for many different things.
242 Striking mention here of Carl Jung being fascinated by the virgin Mary's Assumption, even though he wasn't Catholic; he considered it the most important religious event since the Reformation, and he considered the various arguments for and against this dogma to be beside the point.
243ff Comments here on both the mental image of Jesus being baptized in the river Jordan; see the Renaissance painter Piero della Francesca's work representing it below:
244ff Fascinating (and quite honestly depressing) anecdote the author shares here about a graduate course in psychology the author taught, where he put original writings from Freud and Jung on the syllabus, and the students complained. Even though they were mature students in a graduate course, and some of them were already working in the field, "they were intimidated by the original works of major writers" and were used to "textbooks that systematized and summarized theories." [As always you never want to let your information be pre-digested by someone else! You must go to the source yourself--whether it's a work of literature, a transcript of a company earnings report, a transcript of a political debate, or a Phase 3 trial for a novel biotherapy, you are toast if you let some textbook, some "expert" or (worst of all) some talking head reduce it to chewable bites for you]. The author talks about Jung and Freud here in terms of their quirky writings and their personal writing style; he finds the "soul" of their work in these quirks and biases, and argues that they are "nowhere in the textbooks."
245 "The intellect often demands proof that it is on solid ground." The author contrasts this with the soul enjoying a discussion that is never complete, a soul that is content with uncertainty [or perhaps you could say "not-knowingness" or epistemic uncertainty].
247ff Comments on the idea of puer: the face of the soul that is boyish [like Tom Sawyer!]. Note that a thing can also have a puer quality, such as a house built for its narcissistic self-image rather than for comfort or practicality; how this puer quality is prevalent in religion and the spiritual life, see for example the story of Icarus who wanted to escape the labyrinth of daily life or the confinement of everyday life. Note also the mention of Bellerophon, who flew on the winged horse Pegasus in order to eavesdrop on the conversations of the gods, this is an archetype for "the desire to know what is not given to humans to know." Also Phaeton, who drives the chariot of the sun across the sky, and who falls into a fiery crash on the Earth; also Acteon, who sees Artemis at her bath and is transformed into a deer and then hunted down and killed: "spiritual vision comes with a price."
249 Also note the author's criticism of those who in the modern era say "God told me what to do" as if they were specifically chosen or are somehow special enough to trusted with God's secrets; he sees this as a sort of narcissism.
250 On the puer spirit of Jesus: doing his father's work; his temptation; performing miracles but also carrying the burden of his father's spiritual charge with a melancholy side; then "lifted" from this life. Note also his distance from his own earthly family, living mostly in the company of a gang of men and at odds with the establishment. The author describes various paradoxes and contradictions of the puer spirit here.
252ff Interesting anecdote here about a woman who had a dream about her son-in-law soaring in the air with his clothes inflated with air, while she was holding onto a rope so that he wouldn't fly away: the author interprets this as a type of anguish a person experiences as they try to hold a loved one back from the puer spirit, in an attempt to protect them from it. Also note puer's opposite term, senex, or old man.
253ff Comments here on faith: when practiced soulfully one remains in a state of wonder, one isn't defensive or anxiously holding on to attachments to belief or disbelief; doubt "can be brought into a faith that is fully mature." Also on the idea that a real trust of faith is to decide to trust someone knowing that betrayal is inevitable, thus it is a form of vulnerability, and also a form of trust that one can survive the pain of betrayal. [Genuinely intriguing comments here.] Comments on having some uncertainty that we allow into our faith (in Jungian terms one would call this faith's "shadow"), because without it we fall victim to neurotic excess, feeling superior to others.
255ff Extended discussion of the author's cousin, a nun, who lost her faith later in her life while she was suffering from a painful and fatal disease, but then regained her faith after "emptying herself" in the Buddhist sense, realizing she did not need comfort from the hospital chaplain or anyone else; she could find it in herself. "My relative had to pay a high price to the ferryman when she approached his river of forgetfulness. She had to give up her long-held certainties and the joy of her spiritual life. Her former faith had to be emptied before it could be renewed and completed."
259ff Interesting comments here on process: "all work with soul is process"; there's no finality, "all goals and all endings are heuristic" as the author phrases it, meaning they are imagined but never literally fulfilled. The author likens it to a labyrinth with lots of dead ends, or an odyssey where the goal is clear but the journey is way more twisted than expected; the author also contrasts this from spiritual literature where the path to God is usually depicted as an ascent. Also note the passage here from Keats' Endymion on the goal to feel existence, not to overcome life's struggles.
261ff On likening the soul's path to Jung's concept of individuation, which likewise is not a goal or destination, but a process. Also note the quote here from James Hillman's book Myth of Analysis: "only God knows our real names." The author goes on to describe the path of the soul as the path of a fool: one without pretense of self-knowledge and certainly with perfection; a path involving sitting with uncertainty and with mystery and doubt; also note the quote here from Keats: on "being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason."
262ff An interesting comment here on human imperfection: "the theological doctrine of incarnation suggests that God validates human imperfection as having mysterious validity and value. Our depressions, jealousies, narcissism, and failures are not at odds with the spiritual life. Indeed, they are essential to it."
Part IV: Care of the World's Soul
Chapter 12: Beauty and the Reanimation of Things
267ff The author notes a change in the Catholic translation of the prayer "Lord, only say the word, and my soul shall be healed" to "Lord, only say the word and I shall be healed." The author describes this as indicating that we no longer make a distinction between soul and self. On how the idea of anima mundi, the soul of the world, seems strange to a modern person who would think of the psyche as basically a "chemical apparatus"; also on finding soul in things as well, like in your house, your car, the tree in front of your house, all of these things have souls too. The entire idea of seeing soul in things is "a step outside the paradigm of modernism."
268ff Comments on how things reveal their soul in their own way: an animal's appearance, a river's power, or a striking building. "Made things also have soul." We can become attached to them or find meaning in them. The author says this isn't sentimentalizing things but rather it's "a sense of common life that extends to objects."
271ff On care for our homes and thinking of a home is a microcosm or an archetypal world; the author says how Marsilio Ficino recommends we should all have images in our houses that remind us of our relationship to the cosmos, like a model of the universe or an astrological painting on the ceiling of our bedroom.
272ff Comments on the psychopathology of things; the idea that if things have soul, then they can also suffer and become neurotic, because this is the nature of the soul; thus we have to look out for things, notice how they're suffering, or see their neurosis and nurse them back to health; on the idea, consistent with anima mundi, that there is no separation between our soul and the world's soul, and if the world is neurotic or depressed we share in that disorder and vice versa; also on the idea that if we neglect and abuse the things of the world we are doing the same to ourselves: this ties into a sound practice of ecology, in how tending to our inner pollutions involves cleaning up ourselves as well as the world. [As always, everything starts with whatever is inside your own circle of control, you have to put your own house in order first.]
274ff Interesting comments here where the author asks why our culture seems so angry at things: the author cites examples like trashed-out areas of our cities, boarded up homes, or spray-painted graffiti on trains; he theorizes that when we are cut off from soul we lose connection to timeless elements or great spans of time; and these things have a much different lifespan than humans; "Old buildings remind us of a past we were not part of. If we are identified with ego, then those past times are an affront to our desire for immortality." Also on the idea that when things no longer serve us we become angry at that as well: when something no longer functions we have no feeling for it, and we discard it. "And yet old things eventually reveal that they hold a great deal of soul." See J.B. Jackson's essay "The Necessity for Ruins" the author cites his argument that things in decay express a theology of birth, death and redemption.
277ff On the Renaissance conception of beauty versus how in the modern era beauty is seen as an accessory or something dispensable; the arts are usually the first to go whenever there are cuts in school funding. The author claims "I will go so far as to say that if we lack beauty in our lives, we will probably suffer familiar disturbances in the soul--depression, paranoia, meaninglessness, and addiction." Also mention of James Hillman's concept of "beauty neurosis": that the soul craves beauty and suffers beauty neurosis in its absence. Various comments here on the importance of beauty in life, and on the idea of giving beauty a more prominent place in our lives.
280ff Returning to the idea of anima mundi and living with more soul in our world and in our daily lives; comments on Ficino, Mirandala and other Renaissance Masters and how they encouraged contact with the ensouled world with daily mindfulness, exposure to certain kinds of music, art, food, landscapes, climate, etc. Note how Ficino was a vegetarian and ate a sparse diet, but was a connoisseur of fine wines.
Chapter 13: The Sacred Arts of Life
285ff This chapter starts out with a discussion of how the arts have removed from daily life in the modern era; they've become technical, we've put art in museums and failed to give it a place in ordinary life. Comments on living artfully, for example by pausing, by being arrested by something artful, contrasting this with modern life where there's no time for thought or for letting our various impressions of the day sink in. On the idea of spending a few minutes of day in quiet reflection; also the idea of taking time to do whatever we are doing; the author talks (even a little sheepishly) about his enjoyment doing dishes.
289ff On reading sacred texts like the Bible; on the medieval idea that in learning, theology is the ultimate science and all other domains are ancillary.
291ff The author recommends that his patients "give increased awareness to their dreams"; that working with them makes life more artful; note some of the author's concrete suggestions here: like not immediately reaching for an interpretation, letting the dream influence and shape how you think about it rather than me other way around: "Instead of trying to figure out the dream, we are letting the dream figure us out." On the idea that dreams reveal themselves to the patient (and therapist) slowly and gradually; on "having patience" with dreams; on not being overly literal with them; on avoiding collusion between the dream ego and the waking dreamer, in other words not slanting the story to the eye in the dream but having the ability to consider different positions relative to the dream. [The section is surprisingly dense, a much denser style that much for the rest of the book: the reader wonders if the author has other writings, papers or essays on dreamwork, I suspect they would be highly useful and interesting!]
294ff Example here of a dream one of the author's patients has, where a friend of hers smears crayons all over the dreamer's typewriter. The patient "knew" what it meant: that her inner child is always interfering with her adult work (because crayons were "childish" in her mind). The author tried to convince her to consider other perspectives, like that perhaps this friend was trying to add color or body or perhaps certain positive qualities of "the child" to her writing for example; he was struck by her negative narcissism and by her judgments about her inner child: she didn't want to accept her own childlike ways. So the author suggested an interpretation that would move her "away from her attachment to her usual way of thinking about herself." [One heuristic that immediately comes to my mind is think about the dream in a way you wouldn't typically think about it--or even better: think about it in as many ways that you wouldn't typically think about it, and see what this process uncovers.]
295 Interesting comment here about how dreams indicate how we deal with all kinds of things, including our interpretations of the past, of our current situation, of our problems; also there's an interesting meta-idea here: how we interact with and relate to our dreams is instructive too, not just the dreams themselves.
295ff More thoughts here on dream work: there is never a single definitive reading of a dream as a general rule; a dream can reveal something altogether new even if it is the same dream at another time; on never translating a dream into a "final" meaning; on how they can remain fertile enigmas for years of reflection; The author repeats the idea of "care of the soul" in contrast to "understanding the soul" and frames this idea with dreams too: we don't have a destination in our search for meaning, like modernity seems to encourage.
297 On how we usually assign a symbolic meaning to images in a dream, but the author asks "What if there were no hidden meaning, no underlying message?
298ff A discussion here of the concept of a "daimon": a multitude of unnamed spirits that motivate and guide life; see for example Socrates, who, according to the author "claimed to have lived his life according to the dictates of his daimon." Carl Jung also discusses this concept, although he preferred to use the term "the unconscious," saying that it brings us dreams or things that are unknown or alien. Interesting story here about Jung while he was building his stone tower, the workmen delivered a large stone that was the wrong size. Jung took this mistake as the work of his daimon, and used the stone for one of his important sculptures, The Bollingen Stone. [In other words they are sources of serendipity, of coincidence, of luck (probably both good and bad), they give us signs that we should follow and attend to, etc.]
299 "Ficino warned against living in conflict with the daimon lest you succumb to the worst kind of soul sickness. As an example, he says you should never decide where to live without taking into full consideration the demands of the daimon, which may appear as an intuitive attraction or inhibition."
300ff Final comments here regarding living artfully: having works of art in your home, having music surround you, also perceiving things through a lens of soul. Interesting quote here from Leonardo da Vinci in one of his notebooks: "Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?" On the idea of perceiving things through this kind of eye: for example seeing a Cezanne when we look at our kitchen table, having a poetic interpretation of ordinary life.
304 "Care of the soul is not a project of self-improvement nor a way of being released from the troubles and pains of human existence. It is not at all concerned with living properly or with emotional health. These are the concerns of temporal, heroic, Promethean life. Care of the soul touches another dimension, in no way separate from life, but not identical either with a problem solving that occupies so much of our consciousness. We care for the soul solely by honoring its expressions, by giving it time and opportunity to reveal itself, and by living life in a way that fosters the depth, interiority, and quality in which it flourishes. Soul is its own purpose and end."
To Read:
The Homeric Hymns
Paracelsus: Selected Writings (ed. Jolande Jacobi)
Marsilio Ficino: The Book of Life
James Hillman: A Blue Fire (ed. Thomas Moore)
James Hillman: Myth of Analysis
Robert Sardello: Facing the World with Soul: The Reimagination of Modern Life
Apuleius: The Golden Asse
Michel Foucault: The Care of the Self
Nicholas of Cusa: On Learned Ignorance
Pico della Mirandola: Oration on the Dignity of Man
Pico della Mirandola: Poetic Theology
Plato: Symposium
Giorgio Vasari: Lives of the Artists
Robert Burton: The Anatomy Of Melancholy
Rainer Maria Rilke: Letters to a Young Poet
Georges Bataille: On Nietzsche
Georges Bataille: Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939
Erasmus: In Praise of Folly
***Igor Stravinsky: Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons [PDF]
Carl Jung: Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Jung's memoirs)
Carl Jung: Psychology and Alchemy
Carl Jung: Psychology and Religion: West and East
Oscar Wilde: De Profundis
The Tibetan Book of the Dead
***Karl Kerényi: The Gods of the Greeks
***Karl Kerényi: Zeus and Hera
***Karl Kerényi: Asklepios: Archetypal Image of the Physician's Existence [public domain link]
Novalis: Philosophical Writings (German poet/philosopher)
Novalis: Hymns to the Night
Norman O. Brown: Love's Body
Linda Sexson: Ordinarily Sacred ["extraordinary" per the author]
Patricia Berry: Echo's Subtle Body: Contributions to an Archetypal Psychology
Tracy Kidder: The Soul of a New Machine
J.B. Jackson: The Necessity for Ruins and Other Topics
***Yanagi Soetsu: The Unknown Craftsman
David Miller: The Doctrines of Grace
Media:
Ingmar Bergman: Fanny and Alexander [film]
Samuel Beckett: Krapp's Last Tape [play]
Euripides: Hippolytus [play]
Aristophanes: The Frogs [play]