Elizabeth Brodersen

Taboo, Personal and Collective Representations examines the symbolic nature of taboo, asking what is the purpose of a taboo and how does it vary cross-culturally? The book focuses on the concept of taboo as an in-between, organizing principle which separates and differentiates stages through a ritual process of separation of order as clean/blessed from disorder as polluted/disassociated. This book uses an interdisciplinary approach which compares the anthropological, ethnological, sociological, and depth psychological perspectives of renowned scholars in their examination of taboos. Unconscious/conscious taboos influence how we perceive transitional, indeterminate states across margins in the maturation and individuation processes. The book argues that a taboo embodies the perilous, symbolic meaning of such a rite of passage and that its emotional value and intensity in the form of symptomology varies across cultures. Taboo, Personal and Collective Representations will be of great interest to researchers, academics and post-graduate students in the fields of anthropology, ethnology, origins of religion, race, gender, and depth psychology.

Origin and Positioning within Cultural Complexes

Taboo, Personal and Collective Representations

Michael Glock

Jungian Perspectives on Rebirth and Renewal brings together an international selection of contributors on the themes of rebirth and renewal. With their emphasis on evolutionary ancestral memories, creation myths and dreams, the chapters in this collection explore the indigenous and primordial bases of these concepts. Presented in eight parts, the book elucidates the importance of indirect, associative, mythological thinking within Jungian psychology and the efficacy of working with images as symbols to access unconscious creative processes. Part I begins with a comparative study of the significance of the phoenix as symbol, including its image as Jung’s family crest. Part II focuses on Native American indigenous beliefs about the transformative power of nature. Part III examines synchronistic symbols as liminal place/space, where the relationship between the psyche and place enables a co-evolution of the psyche of the land. Part IV presents Jung’s travels in India and the spiritual influence of Indian indigenous beliefs had on his work. Part V expands on the rebirth of the feminine as a dynamic, independent force. Part VI analyses ancestral memories evoked by the phoenix image, exploring archetypal narratives of infancy. Part VII focuses on eco-psychological, synchronistic carriers of death, rebirth and renewal through mythic characterisations. Finally, part VIII explores the mythopoetic, visionary dimensions of rebirth and renewal that give literary expression to indigenous people/primordial psyche re-navigated through popular literature. The chapters both mirror and synchronise a rebirth of Jungian and non-Jungian academic interest in indigenous peoples, creation myths, oral traditions and narrative dialogue as the ‘primordial psyche’ worldwide, and the book includes one chapter supplemented by an online video. This collection will be inspiring reading for academics and students of analytical psychology, Jungian and post-Jungian studies and mythology, as well as analytical psychologists, Jungian analysts and Jungian psychotherapists. To access the online video which accompanies Evangeline Rand's chapter, please request a password at http://www.evangelinerand.com/life_threads_orissa_awakenings.html

Phoenix rising

Jungian Perspectives on Rebirth and Renewal

Dan Rubin

Words on Plays, American Conservatory Theater's in-depth performance guide series, offers insight into the plays, playwrights,and productions of the A.C.T. subscription season. This special collector's edition of Words on Plays explores the process of creating an original musical from Armistead Maupin's beloved Tales of the City series.It features in-depth interviews with originators of the musical-Jeff Whitty, Jake Shears, John Garden, and Jason Moore-as well as the scenic and costume designers-and Maupin himself. Original essays examine Maupin's opus in the context of the canon of gay literature and San Francisco's history of acceptance.

Words on Plays

Instilled in interdisciplinary cross-cultural perspectives of mythical, socio-economic, literary, pedagogic and psychoanalytic representations, two archetypal, creative inheritance laws interact as ‘twins’: Eros (fusion/containment/safety) and Thanatos (division/separation/risk). Hypothesising these ‘twin’ laws as matrilineal (Eros) and patrilineal (Thanatos), this book explores why cross-cultural forms, including gender traits, are not fixed but are instead influenced by earlier flexible matrilineal forms. Through a study of ‘twins’ on macro and micro levels, Elizabeth Brodersen argues that a psychological ‘twin’ dilemma is implicit in inheritance laws and offers a unique forum to show how each law competes for primacy as the ‘first’ and ‘other’. Chapters begin by looking at ‘twins’ in creation myths and the historical background to the laws of inheritance, as well as literary representations. The book then moves on to the developmental structures imbued in twin research and educational systems to explore how past cultural forms have been re-defined to fit a modern landscape and the subsequent movement away from the importance of patrilineal primogeniture. Laws of Inheritance will be of key value to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, archetypal theory, cross-cultural depth psychology, cultural anthropology, sociology, gender studies and twin research. The book will also be of interest to practicing psychoanalysts and psychotherapists.

Elizabeth Brodersen

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