Personal Mythology: The Psychology of Your Evolving Self: Using Ritual- Dreams- and Imagination to Discover Your Inner Story

Product Information

Let’s explore the four particularly widely remarked-upon parts of the Viking self and their dominant characterizations. In 1973, Rollo May remarked that "the underlying function of psychotherapy is the indirect reinterpretation and remolding of the patient's symbols and myths" (p.342). And in 1975 he added, "The individual must define his or her own values according to personal myths...Authentic values for a given patient emerge out of the personal myth of that patient." According to May (1975), psychotherapy can best be described as the collaboration between therapist and patient in the adventure of exploring the patient's awareness of himself and others. "The person can then cultivate his own awareness of his personal myth, which will yield his values and identity as well as give him some shared basis for interpersonal relationships" (p.706). McLeester (1976, p.8) applied the concept to dream interpretation, stating, "In dreams we can discover our "personal myth." the story... underlying our daily lives." Ullman and Zimmerman (1979) applied the personal myth concept to dream interpretation, writing that it is the nature of dreams to expose and puncture dysfunctional myths while illuminating the self-deceptive strategies one uses to avoid initiating a more functional pattern of behavior. Psychological myths present one with a journey from the known to the unknown which, according to both Jung and Campbell, represents a psychological need to balance the external world with one's internal consciousness of it. However that may be, the story of the myth itself usually involves a hero or heroine on a journey in which they discover their true identity or fate and, in so doing, resolve a crisis while also providing an audience with some important cultural value.

Narcissus has been a subject for many painters such as Caravaggio, Poussin, Turner, Dalí, Waterhouse, Carpioni, Lagrenée, and Roos. Chamberlain, Basil Hall (2008). The Kojiki: Japanese Records of Ancient Matters. Forgotten Books. ISBN 978-1-60506-938-8 . Retrieved 9 February 2011. Madonna “is the only one we can look up to nowadays,” said another fan at Macy’s, a pair of Wayfarers on her nose, a ragged scrunchie lost in her unyielding mound of auburn hair. “She doesn’t condemn femininity.”Many of the academics who contributed to The Madonna Connection occupied similar ambivalent territory. Their interests would later come to define, and be stretched to the limits by, internet criticism. The ’90s detractors and their descendants criticized the academic tendency to overanalyze, to reach for meaning, but it’s exactly this freedom — a brazen interpretive horsepower — that animates these essays.

Hermann Hesse's character "Narcissus" in " Narcissus and Goldmund" shares several of mythical Narcissus' traits, although his narcissism is based on his intellect rather than his physical beauty. Jacoby, Mario (1991). Individuation and Narcissism: The Psychology of Self in Jung and Kohut (1sted.). Routledge. ISBN 978-0415064644.

Jung believed that physiological changes as well as social influences contributed to the development of sex roles and gender identities. Jung suggested the influence of the animus and anima archetypes were also involved in this process. According to Jung, the animus represents the masculine aspect in women while the anima represented the feminine aspect in men. William Faulkner's character "Narcissa" in Sanctuary, sister of Horace Benbow, was also named after Narcissus. Throughout the novel, she allows the arrogant, pompous pressures of high-class society to overrule the unconditional love that she should have for her brother. Part four of " Supper's Ready" by Genesis, entitled "How Dare I Be So Beautiful?", describes an encounter with Narcissus in the aftermath of a battle.

One of these four parts was physical, and the other three were spiritual. However, intriguingly, in the Norse religion, for something to be spiritual didn’t necessarily mean that it was truly immaterial or incorporeal. Instead, spirit was an especially fine kind of material substance, much like air – and, as in many ancient cultures, spirit was synonymous with breath. Echo found it hard to tell Narcissus how she felt for him, in any case, because she had already been cursed so that she could only repeat what others said, rather than speak for herself.

Greek mythology

There is an entire field of psychology dedicated to the narratives we make from our lives. These researchers say that, except in the most extreme cases, no one is able to look at events without trying to provide their own meaning. Certainly, there is a spectrum. S ome people strongly see their life as a story, others less so. But to attempt to turn an event into a story is to be human.

The philosophy of self examines the idea of the self at a conceptual level. Many different ideas on what constitutes self have been proposed, including the self being an activity, the self being independent of the senses, the bundle theory of the self, the self as a narrative center of gravity, and the self as a linguistic or social construct rather than a physical entity. The self (or its non-existence) is also an important concept in Eastern philosophy, including Buddhist philosophy. Some argue that Madonna discredited the postwar division of gender roles by relaxing binary distinctions altogether, effectively tiptoeing toward a new wave of feminism. “The postmodern is seen as opening endless spaces for the play of multiple selves and meanings,” dissolving binaries and hierarchies such that “pleasure is found in the confusion of boundaries,” writes Roseann M. Mandziuk. Naomi Iizuka's play Polaroid Stories, a contemporary rewrite of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, features Narcissus as a character. In the play he is portrayed as a self obsessed, and drug addicted young man who was raised on the streets. He is alluded to being a member of the LGBT+ community and mentions his sexual endeavours with older men, some ending with the death of these men due to drug overdoses. He is accompanied by the character Echo, whom he continuously spurns. Priestley, Leonard C. D. C. (1999) Pudgalavada Buddhism: The Reality of the Indeterminate Self. South Asian Studies Papers, 12, monograph 1. University of Toronto: Centre for South Asian Studies. I can’t feel this narrative at all. It’s not part of my conscious mind. For years, each time my therapist brought up the separation, I would bat it away, impatient. I don’t remember much from being that young; I only remember, later, the emotional memory of hating my grandparents and not knowing why. Because it felt natural, all I could remember knowing, I didn’t believe it was a constructed narrative. For all of us, that is a mistake.

That Time cover — the imperial arbiter of American monoculture for much of the 20th century — is now a footnote to a footnote in her life. Madonna would become one of the most-studied, most-written-about figures in U.S. cultural history. The press called her ’80s and ’90s interlocutors “Madonnologists” and their flowering discipline “Madonna studies.” They wrote books and journal articles like “Living to Tell: Madonna’s Resurrection of the Fleshly,” “Justify My Ideology: Madonna and Traditional Values,” and “The Making of Matriarchy: A Comparison of Madonna and Margaret Thatcher.” There were academic conferences about Madonna’s place in gender studies and media studies and a paper sketching out “a psychoanalytic view on Madonna’s music videos” at the University of Leipzig. But a two-year-old doesn’t know that. As Ann Thomas, president of an organization that works with traumatized children, explained to New York Magazine , children are egocentric. They are likely to believe they caused their own separation —“which can leave them deeply suspicious of their parents, and unwilling to return to the level of emotional closeness they had previously shared.” That’s a narrative if I ever heard one. That’s taking an event and ascribing meaning to it that does not exist, and letting that creation of the mind change outward reality. The myth of Narcissus has inspired artists for at least two thousand years, even before the Roman poet Ovid featured a version in book III of his Metamorphoses. This was followed in more recent centuries by other poets (e.g. Keats and Alfred Edward Housman) and painters ( Caravaggio, Poussin, Turner, Dalí (see Metamorphosis of Narcissus), and Waterhouse).