Archetypal Imagination: Glimpses of the Gods in Life and Art

by Noel Cobb (Introduction)

This unique book is about freeing psychology's poetic imagination from the dead weight of unconscious assumptions about the soul. Whether we think of the soul scientifically or medically, behaviorally or in terms of inner development, all of us are used to thinking of it in an individual context, as something personal. In this book, however, we are asked to consider psychology from a truly transpersonal perspective as a cultural, universal-human phenomenon.

Cobb teaches us to look at the world as a record of the soul's struggles to awaken and as the soul's poetry. From this perspective, the real basis of the mind is poetic. Beauty, love, and creativity are as much instincts of the soul as sexuality or hunger. Cobb shows us how artists and mystics can teach us the meaning of love, death, and beauty, if only we can awaken to their creations. The exemplars here are Dante, Rumi, Rilke, Munch, Lorca, Schumann, and Tarkovsky.

Genres: Psychology

256 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1992

Reviews

[- Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

As humans are meaning driven, such topics like unifing one physical law to describe all nature, or coming up with the finite form of truth, or the archetypal state of man's inner world, seems to be one of humanity's biggest objects, and that doesn't differ much on the filed of psychology, where psychologist, specifically Jung, defined the archetypal psychological type, and many scholarships after him became Jungian, as the author of this book too, only that he expanded his views and knowledge, so he breaks free from the "spell" of Junginan school of thoughts, into something more profound, but still walks aside with the metaphorical, mystical, and spiritual approach towards life.

At the first chapter Noel share with us his devoted journey, and how the awakening of the imagination, qnd the artist wihtin all of us, does help lots of things, that orthodoxic, dogmatic approach never solve it. He analyzes the works of the Russian film director Andari Tarakofsky, as a representation of the quest of the artist on the soul of spirituality.

Then he talks about such religious ecstasic experiences, that many people experienced, and it's root in historical figures, as in which comes a reference to the bell, and how it's the name of the Babylon king.

An astonishing expression once was wrote by about his spiritual enlistment, that was beautifully formulated as follows:



had recently discovered. How else could I have made it through six years of clinical psychology at the University of Oslo? Rilke and Munch were older soul brothers, telling me about the wolves I would meet in the forest, pointing out secret paths known only to initiates in the brotherhood of dark pain. Through them I began to trust my own sense of soul, to believe in the value and the nobility of the imagination, to dare to own experiences previously locked out in shame and humiliation. And then a strange thing happened. When I began to own my own soul life, I also began to see that it wasn't only mine. There was another dimension which didn't really belong to me. What freedom! To discover that I was also Everyman, Everywoman! The same currents of soul flowing through me as through the person walking beside me. We meet in this river-not the petty personal one in which so many schools of psychology get caught-but the bigger one, the greater river.




The tone and and speech of this book is very groundy and earthy; as it covers such phenomenons, that requires less predigious of the intelctual antique.

[Janet Kane]

A great book in the area of archetypal psychology as defined by James Hillman. Archetypes are not only in our psyche, they are out in the world and that is what Noel Cobbis writing about.

[Hella]

Archetypen onderzocht in verschillende takken van kunst: film, schilderkunst, poëzie, muziek en mythologie. Inspirerend voor alle kunstenaars!