The Descent of the Soul and the Archaic explores the motif of kįtabasis (a "descent" into an imaginal underworld) and the importance it held for writers from antiquity to the present, with an emphasis on its place in psychoanalytic theory.
This collection of chapters builds on Jungs insights into katabasis and nekyia as models for deep self-descent and the healing process which follows. The contributors explore ancient and modern notions of the self, as obtained through a "descent" to a deeper level of imaginal experience. With an awareness of the difficulties of applying contemporary psychological precepts to ancient times, the contributors explore various modes of self-formation as a process of discovery. Presented in three parts, the chapters assess contexts and texts, goddesses, and theoretical alternatives.
This book will be of interest to scholars and analysts working in wide-ranging fields, including classical studies, all schools of psychoanalysis, especially Jungs, and postmodern thought, especially the philosophy of Deleuze.
1. Introduction: Is the only way up? Part I: Katįbasis in Greek and
Latin Literature
2. Psycho-cosmic descent in ancient Greece: from abyss to
self-containment
3. Katabasis in reverse: Heraclitus, the archaic, and the
abyss
4. Virgil, epicureanism, and unseemly behaviour
5. The Neoplatonic
katabasis of the soul to the world of the senses: Language as a tool for
regaining self-consciousness
6. Acting out, science fiction and Lucian's True
HistoryPart II: Katįbasis, Goddesses, and Saints
7. Inanna's descent to the
netherworld and analytical psychology: What has the mistress of all the lands
done?
8. Katabasis in an ancient Indian myth: Savitri Encounters Yama
9.
Katabasis in middle eastern female hagiography: a post-Jungian perspective
Part III: Katįbasis in Theory
10. Raising hell: Freud's katabatic metaphors
in The Interpretation of Dreams
11. Orestes, Katabasis, and aggrieved
masculine entitlement
12. Regression, Nekyia, and involution in the thought
of Jung and Deleuze Epilogue Salon Noir
Paul Bishop is William Jacks Chair of Modern Languages in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Glasgow, UK.
Terence Dawson is an independent scholar, following a career of teaching in the UK and Singapore. He has a special interest in the relation between literature, music, and the visual arts.
Leslie Gardner is Director of the international literary agency Artellus Limited, based in London, UK. She is a founding member of the International Association of Jungian Studies and is currently a Fellow in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex.
