Christine Downing has graced the campus of San Diego State University, returning like Persephone each spring for the past ten years to deliver the annual lecture named in her honor. Printed here in their entirety, the talks are autobiographical, poetical, literary musings on the subjects that have occupied her for the past ten years, including the Holocaust, memory, the Bible, the Goddess, Martin Buber, Sigmund Freud, the myth of Orpheus, Greek tragedy, and the Imagist poet H.D.
Professor Downing's extensive publications on the role of myth in the psychologies of Freud and Jung, and in the...
Christine Downing has graced the campus of San Diego State University, returning like Persephone each spring for the past ten years to deliver the ann...
These essays are clearly not about play as unseriousness, not about fun and games, a point that should be abundantly demonstrated by the reference to the death camps of the Holocaust. They are about the space, the "Spielraum," necessary for the wheel of life to turn soulfully. Christine Downing's essays may be felt to function as a possible prelude to the play of a truly ludic imagination, which, like Buber's "slow medicine," quietly enters the soul, working into the heart, awakening a secret melody to be noticed only later. "Preludes," indeed David L. Miller Author of "Three Faces of...
These essays are clearly not about play as unseriousness, not about fun and games, a point that should be abundantly demonstrated by the reference to ...
"Gleanings" is a gathering of hitherto uncollected essays written by Christine Downing during the quarter century since the publication in 1981 of her seminal book, "The Goddess: Mythological Images of the Feminine." Many of the essays continue her exploration of Greek goddess traditions and other aspects of Greek mythology. Others grow out of her ongoing involvement with the thought of both Freud and Jung. The interrelationship between polis and psyche, city and soul, is a central theme of several of these papers, including those that focus on the Holocaust. Various facets of lesbian and gay...
"Gleanings" is a gathering of hitherto uncollected essays written by Christine Downing during the quarter century since the publication in 1981 of her...
In a series of chapters each focusing on a different goddess or mythical woman, Christine Downing traces her own path of individuation from maiden-daughter to mature woman. A therapist, university professor of religion, and former president of the American Academy of Religion, she writes what is essentially an autobiography with an inner focus on her dreams and fantasies, and their meanings to her. She writes in a direct and intimate way, using to great bit effortless effect her deep culture and wide learning.
-"The Journal of Analytical Psychology"
In a series of chapters each focusing on a different goddess or mythical woman, Christine Downing traces her own path of individuation from maiden-dau...
