Old Age : Journey into Simplicity

by LUKE, HELEN M.

• ISBN13: 9780609805909
• ISBN10: 0609805908
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2001-02-01
• Publisher: Harmony/Bell Tower

Summary

In this classic text on aging wisely, the renowned Jungian analyst Helen M. Luke reflects on the final journeys described in Homer's Odyssey, Shakespeare's King Lear and The Tempest, and T. S. Eliot's "Little Gidding," and also on suffering. In examining some of the great masterpieces of literature produced by writers at the end of their lives, she elucidates the difference between growing old and disintegrating and encourages us to grow emotionally and mentally in this culminating stage of our own lives.

Author Biography

Helen M. Luke was born in England in 1904. In midlife she studied at the Jung Institute in Zurich, then moved to the United States and established an analytical practice with Robert Johnson in Los Angeles. In 1962 she founded the Apple Farm Community in Three Rivers, Michigan, "a center for people seeking to discover and appropriate the transforming power of symbols in their lives." In her later years Helen Luke was the model wise woman for many people. She died at Apple Farm in 1995, and her final book, <i>Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made On</i>, a memoir and excerpts from her 54 volumes of journals, was published posthumously.

Table of Contents

Foreword	9	(13)
Thomas Moore
Introduction	13	(6)
Barbara A. Mowat
The Odyssey	19	(24)
King Lear	43	(10)
The Tempest	53	(52)
Little Gidding	105	(16)
Suffering	121	(12)
Notes	133