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This book is an exploration of the connections between ancient and modern psyche and the relevance of Greek poets, playwrights, philosophers, and mythologies to the modern human condition. The basis of the book is understanding myth from a Jungian perspective in exploration of archetypal narratives as they relate to the human condition throughout the ages. The focus is on the application of such narratives on contemporary theory and clinical practice. Those “things” worth remembering are eternal.
There are 11 chapters, as well as acknowledgments, an introduction, and a section on the invocations. In addition, the editors have created a special arrangement with the Archive for Research in Archetypical Symbolism (ARAS), which links the reader to many color images and film clips that add to the written text. ARAS is accessed through the URL links provided in each chapter.
Chapter 1, “A Fool's Guide to Folly” by Thomas Singer, begins with Singer's drawing of a self-portrait of the fool dancing the folly of life, this being generative of creativity—the positive and inspired variety of folly that can lead to the ability to laugh at our human foolishness and enjoying the folly of being human that occasionally joins hands with divine folly. “Folly includes everything from play to murder. Folly can be a truth teller, and folly can be a deceiver.” Singer discusses Nicholas Kazantzakis's Zorba the Greek with the perspective of “his joyful embrace of folly, of setting reason aside for a different kind of logic that can affirm the nonrational as a source of life.” Also discussed are Plato's cave that appears in The Republic, Erasmus's The Praise of Folly, and the template of an archetypal split between illusion (our natural condition) and reality, of mistaking shadowy reflections for what is truly real, and finally the chapter ends with a discussion of Shakespeare's King Lear as interpreted by Fellini and Lapham.
Chapter 2, “The Mystery of Dionysos” by Virginia Beane Rutter, begins