Persephone Returns - Softcover

Wilkinson Ph.D., Tanya

Softcover

ISBN 10: 187929009X ISBN 13: 9781879290099

Publisher: PageMill Press, 1996

Synopsis

Jungian psychologist Tanya Wilkinson takes a balanced and compassionate look at the issue of victimization. In an engaging and entertaining style, she explore myths and fairy tales involving victims and heroes and encourages individuals to reach a new level of spiritual and emotional maturity.

About this title

Reviews

A psychotherapist and professor, Wilkinson (psychology, California Inst. of Integral Studies) compares her clients' struggles to mythic and fairytale accounts in the vein of many Jungians before her. Concentrating on case studies involving victimization, she includes the Persephone/Demeter story, Beauty and the Beast, and three tales from The Brothers Grimm, all of which lend themselves to an archetypal analysis of the hero/victim dichotomy. Throughout, she stresses the value of exercising liminality?the ability to employ and appreciate emotions, bodily sensations, dreams, and fantasies. Wilkinson makes numerous excellent points, e.g., that the fairy tale "mediates between the otherness of mythic images and everyday life." Although hampered by mundane passages on client histories that pale next to the sparklingly crisp mythic images, this book is recommended for therapists and informed readers alike.?Terry McMaster, Onondaga Cty. Mental Health Svcs., Syracuse, N.Y.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The archetypal figure of the victim seems omnipresent today. Yet we are getting only half its story, psychologist Wilkinson argues, for we don't hear the resolution of victim scenarios, in which the transformed victim rejoins the community. Employing myths and legends as they are illuminated by her experiences with therapeutic clients, Wilkinson sets out to redress the situation. She discloses several alternative paths a victimized person may take--the ways of the redeemer, seeker, pariah, or trickster. Each path has survival value for the victim during the oppressive experience but often paralyzes the victim after a threat ceases. The story Beauty and the Beast, for instance, epitomizes the way in which one victimized child in a family can act as "redeemer" by going as a living sacrifice to be with the family's "beast." Rather than being trapped in such behavior, though, redeemers, Wilkinson says, need to consider the apparent selfishness of Beauty's actions, which miraculously reveal the Prince within the Beast. Excellent psychological self-help literature. Patricia Monaghan

Edition details

• Publisher: PageMill Press
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 187929009X
• ISBN 13: 9781879290099
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 264