Cultivating The Soul

by Zoja, Luigi; Kyburz, Mark; Peck, John

• ISBN13: 9781853437588
• ISBN10: 1853437581
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-05-01
• Publisher: Free Association Books

Summary

In Cultivating the Soul Luigi Zoja argues that the soul's 'cultivation' underpins all cultural phenomena. The author examines the mythopoetic function in human beings by locating Psychoanalysis within the history of the Western world and firmly rooting it in the classical tradition. When, for example, Zoja links psychoanalytic narration with the epic-tragic narration in Greek civilization, he is establishing a remarkable kind of continuity, one which transcends centuries of economic, political and social change to insist on the timeless human need to tell a life story with passion in order to make sense of it. Zoja's masterful knowledge of the classical world is here used dialectically, to understand and explicate our modern-day predicaments. Whether employing classical notions, like hubris, (to analyze the modern phenomenon of arrogant acquisitiveness), or deploying a contemporary perspective on antiquity (to examine, for instance Homer's own technique of "mass communication"), Zoja's words fall like a sword cutting through to the core of what he sees as the inertia of much contemporary thinking. The author explores what he sees as the failure in the formation of a contemporary European identity. Lacking formative myths, with psyches mutilated by the failure of the mythopoetic function, today's citizens are left with little other than an economic reality called "Europe" to orient them. It is in such a context that Zoja claims a crucial role for Psychoanalysis in elucidating cultural, social and political phenomena. Eighteen essays grapple with thinkers from Plato to Hillman, Bloch to Ortega, Michelangelo to Rilke, and Nietzsche to Freud and Jung.

Table of Contents

Preface	13	(6)
Part One: Psyche and Society	19	(34)
Chapter One: Analytical Psychology and Knowledge of the Other	21	(10)
Chapter Two Destructiveness: Tracking its Psychohistory	31	(10)
Chapter Three Truth	41	(8)
Chapter Four James Hillman's Revolution	49	(4)
Part Two: Creation and Growth	53	(78)
Chapter Five Creation As An Extreme Response to Difficulty	55	(12)
Chapter Six Analysis: Growth or Cure?	67	(16)
Chapter Seven The Need for Growth	83	(8)
Chapter Eight Individuation and Paideia	91	(34)
Chapter Nine Destruction and Creation	125	(6)
Part Three: The Classics Up-To-Date	131	(36)
Chapter Eleven The Helmet of Hector	141	(8)
Chapter Twelve The Soul of Midas	149	(8)
Chapter Thirteen The Rape of Europa	157	(10)
Part Four: Tragic Thought	167
Chapter Fourteen The Agamemnon and the Contemporary Presence of Tragedy	169	(12)
Chapter Fifteen A Different Oedipus	181	(8)
Chapter Sixteen Unhappiness	189	(6)
Chapter Seventeen Analysis and Tragedy	195	(26)
Chapter Eighteen In Praise of Not Choosing	221