|
| | | Announcing the release of
The Serpent and the Staff/ The Mermaid and the Diver: Stalking the Roots of Psychoanalysis
by Ronald Schenk PhD
"In this deep and expansive volume, one encounters the breadth of psychoanalytic traditions and its roots in myth, ritual, poetry, music, and alchemy..." -Pamela J. Power, Ph.D., Clinical psychologist, Jungian psychoanalyst, author of Transitions in Jungian Analysis: Essays on Illness, Death and Violence
Within a field which ostensibly aims its focus on the unknowability of a realm below the surface, the unconscious, but which continues its tradition of basing itself in a rational mode “above ground,” ego consciousness, this book aims to “stalk the roots” of the psychoanalytic enterprise in a ground breaking manner. The goal is to bring to light foundational ancestors and agencies, invisible principles and ways of seeing, underlying attitudes and structures which make up the core of the analytic mind in its approach to the question, what heals?
It starts with the ancient art of alchemy which integrates theory and practice, worker and worked upon, and moves from there to illustrate the nature of language as an undercurrent in the flow of the healing process. Ritual and myth serve as guides into the core inter-relational nature of the psyche, as a “wilderness of mirrors,” and finally pathos, experience itself in its essential leaning toward chaos. is presented as the psyche’s “matter” being worked upon in the analytical mode. In short, “Stalking…” intends toward opening the vision of a field which daily grapples with the darkest “underworldly” aspects of the human soul, towards its ur, originary, depth and breadth.
Table of Contents Introduction
Chapter One – Alchemical Awakening: the Initial Mess
Chapter Two – Hands in the Mess: Prima materia in Psychoanalysis
Chapter Three – Rhetoric and Therapy
Chapter Four – Ritual as Healer: Return to Origins
Chapter Five – Myth as Guide: Wound as Healer
Chapter Six – Gnostic Myth as Dream
Chapter Seven – Self/Other: The Infinite Wilderness of Mirrors
Chapter Eight – The Fiery Furnace/The Sacred Bath
Chapter Nine – Slipping into the Swamp
Chapter Ten – Psychopathology I: A Double Vision
Chapter Eleven – Psychopathology II: The Soul as Borderline
Bibliography
Index |
| | | | Praise for The Serpent and the Staff/ The Mermaid and the Diver
"By juxtaposing a great wealth of comparative material drawn from myth and religion, shamanism and alchemy, music and cinema with a series of crystal-clear précis of the seminal insights of the principal theorists of the Freudian and Jungian traditions, the vicissitudes of the healing process, as it unfolds within contemporary Jungian analysis, are vividly born witness to by a master practitioner who is as keenly aware of his own vulnerability within the intersubjective field as he is of his patients’. A cornucopia of insights and amplifications, etymologies and case vignettes, the book also provides, by means of the aesthetic sensibility and poetic acumen of its author, a fresh perspective
on the havoc-wrecking, trickster-like role which severe psychopathology may play in challenging the received narratives and normative assumptions in which the psyche in our time finds itself ensconced."
-Greg Mogenson, Jungian analyst and author of Notional Practice: The Speculative Turn in Analytical Psychology
"In this deep and expansive volume, one encounters the breadth of psychoanalytic traditions and its roots in myth, ritual, poetry, music, and alchemy. Experienced Jungian psychoanalyst Ronald Schenk takes us into the experience of psychoanalysis by giving theory and structure their place and at times laying himself bare in the realities of therapeutic work. We feel, through his evocative writing, the writers, the images and the healing rituals. We feel the sincerity and depth of the author. While stalking the roots, he is not afraid of stirring up the mess of psychoanalysis, nor of exposing its muddy matter, and he is certainly not afraid of, as Wilfred Bion described doing psychanalysis, 'making the best of a bad job.'”
-Pamela J. Power, Ph.D., Clinical psychologist, Jungian psychoanalyst, author of Transitions in Jungian Analysis: Essays on Illness, Death and Violence
|
| | About the Author
Ronald Schenk, CMSW, is a Jungian analyst with a PhD in Phenomenological Psychology and training in psychoanalysis, practicing in Texas as a member of the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts where he has served in many administrative positions including President and as President of the Council of North American Societies of Jungian Analysis.
He has a background in theater and has lived and worked with Navajo Native Americans. He has lectured and published several essays on clinical and cultural subjects and psychological theory and has created a multi-disciplinary presentational mode which includes lecture, song, art, dance and poetry.
His previously published books are: The Soul of Beauty: A Psychological Investigation of Appearance; Dark Night: The Appearance of Death in Everyday Life; The Sunken Quest, the Wasted Fisher, the Pregnant Fish: Post-Modern Reflections on Depth Psychology; and American Soul: A Cultural Narrative.
|
| | | Download the Chiron Catalog for a Complete Listing of Titles
|
| | |
|
|
