You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
One key question when deciding whether or not to read a book, especially a psychology book, is: are you going to learn something? Ronald Schenk's new book, The Serpent and the Staff/The Mermaid and the Diver: Stalking the Roots of Psychoanalysis, delivers on just that, providing an opportunity for the reader to join him in a rich process of contemplating the multi-faceted nature of psychoanalysis itself.
This book, like its colourful, layered title, is notable for its breadth and depth, which in fact are the characteristics of the overall “psychoanalytic project” it investigates. Never dull, Schenk's is a very active meditation (a series of meditations, really) on the roots, but also the current situation, of analysis and its possibilities. The author's viewpoints, and aspects of his writing style, speak to Hillmanian (that is, James Hillman) influences in their attempts to think about or freshly rethink (“re-vision”) Jungian psychology, but Schenk's unique thoughts and style of presentation range wide throughout. His writing is deep yet playful, therefore free. As it moves around, the eager reader or listener is free too, encouraged to join in the author's multiple paths of investigation.
There is much to choose from. Schenk goes wide as well as deep into matters of soul and psyche, at the same time incorporating clinical dimensions (in a way Hillman, for all his brilliance, did not, at least for this reviewer). The book travels fluidly from Jung to soul to philosophy to literature to the inherent intersubjective/relational dynamic in treatment that Schenk terms the “co-constituted analytic field.” Not hampered by its extensive scope (or perhaps because of it), the book always moves right along.
This is not to say The Serpent and the Staff is all fun and games. The book requires careful attention, but then repays it. Schenk's writing has always been notable for its emphasis on language and words themselves: the book's epigraph is from the poet Charles Olson, and furth