This collection of essays, written over a period of years, entertains the shared place of psyche and poetics. Dr. Slattery has explored the manner in which the psyche is poetic and how poetry is deeply psycho-mythical. Influenced in part by the archetypal psychologist James Hillman's idea of the "poetic basis of mind" that comprises the soul's foundation, Slattery's writing moves into the interactive field in which myth is the ground for both psyche and poetry. The essays develop a further understanding of what has been called mythopoiesis, the fundamental myth-making and shaping capacity of...

"Our Daily Breach: Exploring Your Personal Myth Through Herman Melville's Moby-Dick" offers both a way of understanding what has generally been called the greatest novel of the American myth while simultaneously exploring one's own personal myth. Its added feature is that it is an interactive book in allowing reader's to meditate on one question per page for each day of the year and to undercover many facets of one's personal myth through cursive writing. It has been long understood that classics of literature are their own form of therapy in that they frequently tap into some of the most...