Metamorphoses of psyche in psychoanalysis and ancient Greek thought: From mourning to creativity

Abstract

ABSTRACT This book explores liminal and extra-ordinary spaces and how they function and complement one another in contemporary psychoanalytic practice and ancient Greek thought. I begin with my autobiography and describe how I came to recognize and live in liminal spaces as a child and continue with the early death of my mother and how my grieving led to the study of psychoanalytic theory and the transitional spaces and transitions in ancient Greek literature from epic to tragedy, showing a psychic transformation of culture from Homer to Aeschylus. This shift led to the interiorization of the “unthought known” from a matricentric to a patriarchal paradigm. I explore how to regain and integrate the feminine into a western patriarchal paradigm. I conclude with clinical revelations that liquidity in multiplicity can lead to a coherent self while maintaining its sense of the liminal. At all points this book represents the crucial importance of art and symbolism as a necessary component of the psychoanalytic imagination and emphasizes poetic metamorphoses as crucial a way to heal.