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The fact that Spirit and Nature—lectures given at Eranos meetings in 1937 and 1946 — should come to this journal in paperback for review in 1983 testifies to the long-term value of scholarship and to the way in which certain fundamental themes recur at various times in history; such scholarship offers clinicians the opportunity to deepen and enhance their day-to-day work.
For almost as long as written records were made, and are still available for study, the dichotomy spirit/nature has puzzled reflective man and it has led to the attempt to bring the two together, through and after conflict, into harmony and creativity. It is the basis both of much philosophic thought and of much contemporary psychosomatic medicine. For example, the benefit to body and to soul of deep breathing forms the basis of many modern therapies, as well as of meditation practices. The physician Hippocrates, in the middle of the fifth century B.C., considered that ‘disturbances of the pneuma (which he saw as ‘the mobile air that is present in all existing things’) brought about by faulty breathing or faulty nutriment, provoke disturbances in the organism as a whole’ (p. 84). The Pythagorean physicians ‘forbade the eating of beans because they were regarded as highly disturbing to the pneuma’ (p. 85). There is a well-researched modern cookery book which discusses ways of avoiding flatulence brought about by the faulty cooking of beans.
Such utilitarian arguments for scholarship are evidently not lofty ones. Yet, in an age when many working analysts find it difficult (or even impossible) to keep up with what is currently written in books and journals, it seemed to the reviewer that a down-to-earth view could be offered in order to suggest to potential readers that if a choice has to be made — as it always has—a few hours spent with some of the remarkable scholars of Eranos might possibly benefit them (and, indirectly, their patients) more than a reiteration of the latest fashionable theories.
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