Archetypal Imagination: Glimpses of the Gods in Life and Art

Front Cover
SteinerBooks, 1992 - 256 pages

This unique book is about freeing psychology's poetic imagination from the dead weight of unconscious assumptions about the soul. Whether we think of the soul scientifically or medically, behaviorally or in terms of inner development, all of us are used to thinking of it in an individual context, as something personal. In this book, however, we are asked to consider psychology from a truly transpersonal perspective as a cultural, universal-human phenomenon.

Cobb teaches us to look at the world as a record of the soul's struggles to awaken and as the soul's poetry. From this perspective, the real basis of the mind is poetic. Beauty, love, and creativity are as much instincts of the soul as sexuality or hunger. Cobb shows us how artists and mystics can teach us the meaning of love, death, and beauty, if only we can awaken to their creations. The exemplars here are Dante, Rumi, Rilke, Munch, Lorca, Schumann, and Tarkovsky.

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About the author (1992)

Noel Cobb (1938"2015) traveled widely in his early years, both geographically and intellectually, in search of a way of thinking adequate to his own rich and abounding imagination. His odyssey brought him to working with R. D Laing, becoming a Jungian analyst, and developing, with other contemporary thinkers, the re-visioning of psychology and culture through archetypal psychology. With his partner Eva Loewe, he cofounded The London Convivium for Archetypal Studies and published numerous books, including Prospero"s Island: The Secret Alchemy at the Heart of The Tempest. Thomas Moore is the author of Care of the Soul, which spent forty-six weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, as well as fifteen other books on deepening spirituality and cultivating the soul in every aspect of life. He has been a monk, a musician, a university professor, and a psychotherapist, and today he lectures widely on holistic medicine, spirituality, psychotherapy, and ecology. He lectures frequently in Ireland and has a special love of Irish culture. He has Ph. D. in religion from Syracuse University and has won several awards for his work, including an honorary doctorate from Lesley University and the Humanitarian Award from Einstein Medical School of Yeshiva University. He also writes fiction and music and often works with his wife, artist and yoga instructor, Hari Kirin. He writes regular columns for Resurgence and Spirituality & Health. He is a patron of Re-Vision, a London center of spirituality and counseling, and on the board of Turning Point, a bereavement counselors training program in Dublin, Ireland. Recent works include Soul Therapy: The Art and Craft of Caring Conversations (2021) and Ageless Soul: The Lifelong Journey toward Meaning and Joy (2017).

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