The Other Within: The Genius of Deformity in Myth, Culture, & Pscyhe

By Daniel Deardorff

Dealing with the field of myth and psychology, this study proposes that a certain poetic consciousness is generated by those who inhabit societal and psychic margins. This consciousness is identified... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1883991595
• ISBN13: 9781883991593
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: White Cloud Press
• Length: 213 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Trickster Wisdom

All that is nice and proper must be set aside before attempting to read this book. It's not a work for self-proclaimed conformists, but rather for anyone who has an inkling that something vital and important might lie beyond the confines of our everyday, civilized reality. In deliciously poetic prose, interwoven with myths and poems that incite the imagination and break open the heart, The Other Within compels us beyond the tyranny of civilization's metaphorical wall, and towards the crossroads of identity--the place where we might reclaim the parts of ourselves that we've banished due to society's addiction to order and normalcy. Why go there? Because, as Deardorff states, "Only by admission of, and surrender to, the deformities and defects of self and soul can we experience any portion of `wholeness.'" Here at the crossroads we find "Trickster Wisdom"--the wisdom that teaches us how to be "outsider" and "insider" simultaneously, holding both identities in dynamic tension. It is the wisdom of paradox; of maintaining disorder and never losing our connection to the chaos of the beginnings; of "slipping the trap" of the imposed identity that society projects upon us; of playfully examining and blessing the dark muck of life... for without fertilizer, nothing can blossom. Deardorff has truly tapped into Trickster Wisdom. In lush and stimulating language, he draws roadmap to finding this wisdom on our own so we might learn to see the blessings in the wounds we're all inflicted by. He helps the reader begin the journey by sending them down into the mythological world--where the lost wisdom lies--to start the imperative process of "root-strengthening," so that we might learn to sing life instead of living blind; so we can reclaim the sacred nature of our defects and deformities and see that the wounds and betrayals of our lives do indeed have meaning. Calling on the cunning of Trickster Wisdom, we can laugh in reverence of the pain that broke us, knowing that this breaking was divine.

Genius

This book is a precious gem. Multifaceted, complex, brilliant and illuminating, The Other Within is as close to the embodied act of "diving deep and surfacing" as you can get in a text. Deardorff weaves a breathtakingly beautiful series of chapters that teases the mind rapt in concentration towards the uneasy challenge of how the betrayed, deformed Other - mad dog-headed poet, outcast, misfit, trickster and vagabond - might live in the massman's civilized world that has dismissed the gorgeous mess of the liminal badlands. Anti-civilizational psychology at the mythopoeic level. Drawing from the work of mythologians, poets, psychologists and scholars, Deardorff reveals a grasp of archetypal material of such depth that it is often quite difficult to hold on to. Although I hold a deep fascination with Jungian spirituality, archetypal psychology and the study of myth, I am not supremely well-versed on the subject. In other words, I am not a Jungian or Joseph Campbell scholar, and my exposure to, say, the work of Victor Turner has been limited. Therefore, this book is certainly a challenge. It deserves a close and intimate engagement with the text. I found that I needed to read much of the book out loud in order to slow down my absorption of the material so I could effectively process it. But what a rich collection of thought-provoking imagery and material! It is well worth the effort. It is encouraging to know that there are people doing this work out in the world. I recommend this book to anyone who would plumb the depths of meaning in a world enslaved to order. It is far and away one of the most profound books I have read of late.