Ancient Greece, Modern Psyche: Archetypes Evolving

299 Pages·2015·3.77 MB·English

by  Virginia Beane Rutter

ANCIENT GREECE, MODERN PSYCHE
Between Ancient Greece and modern psyche lies a divide of not only three
thousand years, but of two cultures that are worlds apart in art, technology,
economics, and the accelerating flood of historical events. This unique collection
of essays from an international selection of contributors offers compelling
evidence for the natural connection and relevance of ancient myth to
contemporary psyche, and emerges from the second Ancient Greece, Modern
Psyche conference held in Santorini, Greece, in 2012.
This volume is a powerful homecoming for those seeking a living connection
between the psyche of the ancients and our modern psyche. The book looks at
eternal themes such as love, beauty, death, suicide, dreams, ancient Greek myths,
the Homeric heroes, and the stories of Demeter, Persephone, Apollo, and Hermes
as they connect with themes of the modern psyche. The contributors propose that
the link between them lies in the underlying archetypal patterns of human
behavior, emotion, image, thought, and memory.
Ancient Greece, Modern Psyche: Archetypes Evolving makes clear that an
essential part of deciphering our dilemmas resides in a familiarity with Western
civilization’s oldest stories about our origins, our suffering, and the meaning or
meaninglessness in life. It will be of great interest to Jungian psychotherapists,
academics, and students as well as scholars of classics and mythology.
Virginia Beane Rutter, MA, MS, and Thomas Singer, MD, are both Jungian
psychoanalysts affiliated with the C. G. Jung Institute in San Francisco who have
life-long connections to Greek culture. They are co-authors and editors of a
previous volume of Ancient Greece, Modern Psyche which originated from the
first Nomikos Conference in Santorini. Beane Rutter studies ancient myths and
rites of passage through art, archaeology, and psychology and writes about the
archetype of initiation as it appears in the clinical work of individuals today.
Singer has produced and written multiple publications that focus on “the cultural
complex.” He currently serves as President of the National Board of ARAS (the
Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism).
ANCIENT GREECE, MODERN PSYCHE
Archetypes Evolving
Edited by Virginia Beane Rutter and Thomas Singer
FOR PETER, NAFTALI, AND MELINA WITH ALL MY HEART …
Virginia Beane Rutter
FOR JANE WHO IS THE LOVE OF MY LIFE …
Thomas Singer
CONTENTS
List of figures
Editors
Contributors
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Invocation: Dionysos, how it all began: a ritual invocation for the 2012
Ancient Greece, Modern Psyche Conference
CRAIG SAN ROQUE
1 The hero who would not die: warrior and goddess in Ancient Greek and
modern men
VIRGINIA BEANE RUTTER
2 Beauty and the psychoanalytic enterprise: reflections on a rarely
acknowledged dimension of the healing process
DONALD KALSCHED
3 Introduction to the Kore Story/Persephone’s Dog
CRAIG SAN ROQUE
4 Death and necessity at the threshold of new life
RICHARD TROUSDELL
5 How Hermes and Apollo came to love each other in the Homeric Hymn To
Hermes: imagination and form in Ancient Greece and modern psyche
JULES CASHFORD
6 Penelope scapes
MELINA CENTOMANI RUTTER
7 Dreaming in place: Santorini, Greece
ROBIN VAN LÖBEN SELS
Closing: travelling Ariadne: a romance
CRAIG SAN ROQUE
Index
FIGURES
4.1 The Euphronios Krater or wine-mixing bowl, c. 515 BCE
4.2 Greek, Laconia, black-figured terracotta kylix or cup, c. 550–520 BCE
4.3 The cover of Elizabeth Smith’s dream manuscript
4.4 Photograph of Sophie Scholl (1921–1943)
5.1 Hermes as baby, youth, and elder
5.2 Hermes as Herm, with caduceus, altar, and tree
5.3 Coin of Claudius
5.4 Hermes Chthonios summoning the Keres out of the grave-pithos (or grave-
jar)
5.5 Hermes weighing the souls of two combatants in battle
5.6 Hermes as Daimon with Paris and Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite
5.7 Hermes with his kerykeion, standing on a flower
5.8 Hermes leading the Horai, the Seasons, and the Eniautos Daimon
5.9 Hermes in his liknon, with Apollo and his mother, Maia, in dispute above
him
5.10  Hermes flying
5.11  Apollo, holding a bough of laurel which crowns him, is seated beside the
Delphic omphalos
5.12  Apollo playing the lyre
5.13  Apollo seated on the omphalos
7.1 Pillar of Isis
EDITORS
Virginia Beane Rutter, MA, MS, is a Jungian analyst who trained at the C. G.
Jung Institutes of Zurich and San Francisco. Her first master’s degree in art
history (University of California, Berkeley) and an early sustaining love of
Greece developed into a passion for studying ancient myths and rites of
passage through art, archaeology, and psychology. These studies grew out of
her clinical practice and coalesced around archetypal themes of initiation as
they manifest in the unconscious material of women and men today. She is the
author of three books, including Woman Changing Woman: Restoring the
Mother–Daughter Relationship (HarperCollins, 1993, and Spring, 2009);
Celebrating Girls: Nurturing and Empowering Our Daughters (Conari Press,
1996); and Embracing Persephone: How to Be the Mother You Want for the
Daughter You Cherish (Kodansha, 2000, Conari Press, 2001). Her article, “The
Archetypal Paradox of Feminine Initiation in Analytic Work,” is a chapter in
Initiation: The Living Reality of an Archetype (Routledge, 2007), which she co-
edited with Thomas Kirsch and Thomas Singer; and her article “Saffron
Offering and Blood Sacrifice: Transformation Mysteries in Jungian Analysis,”
is a chapter in the first volume of Ancient Greece, Modern Psyche: Archetypes
in the Making (Spring, 2011), which she co-edited with Thomas Singer.
Thomas Singer, MD, is a Jungian analyst and psychiatrist. After studying
religion and European literature at Princeton University, he graduated from
Yale Medical School and later trained at Dartmouth Medical Center and the C.
G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. His writing includes articles on Jungian
theory, politics, and psychology, and he has written and/or edited the
following books: Who’s the Patient Here? Portraits of the Young
Psychotherapist (Oxford University Press, 1978, with Stuart Copans); A Fan’s
Guide to Baseball Fever: The Official Medical Reference (Elijim Publications,
1991, with Stuart Copans and Mitchell Rose); The Vision Thing: Myth, Politics
and Psyche in the World (Routledge, 2000); The Cultural Complex:
Contemporary Jungian Perspectives on Psyche and Society (Routledge, 2004,
with Samuel L. Kimbles); Initiation: The Living Reality of an Archetype
(Routledge, 2007, with Thomas Kirsch and Virginia Beane Rutter); Psyche and
the City: A Soul’s Guide to the Modern Metropolis (Spring, 2010); Ancient
Greece, Modern Psyche: Archetypes in the Making (Spring, 2011, with Virginia
Beane Rutter), Placing Psyche: Exploring Cultural Complexes in Australia
(Spring, 2011); and Listening to Latin America: Exploring Cultural Complexes
in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Uruguay, and Venezuela (Spring, 2012).