Modern Myths and Medical Consumerism: The Asclepius Complex (Research in Analytical Psychology and Jungian Studies)

Description

Modern Myths and Medical Consumerism is concerned with the loss of a sense of limit in technological medicine today, and the way in which the denial of death leads to an uncontrollable, consumeristic multiplication of needs. Taking its starting point from C. G. Jung’s analytical psychology, the book gives a symbolic interpretation based on archetypal, philosophical and socio-psychoanalytic ideas developed through the author’s personal experience, moving from the medical to the psychoanalytical paradigm. Lanfranchi depicts ideal sources of medicine, based on archetypal material drawn from Greek myth, and discusses the progressive steps of the doctor’s consciousness’ evolution up to contemporary times. Critiquing current medicine and its ‘modern myths’, the book suggests the prevailing model of economic development is unsustainable, and provides prospects of a more contained ecological medicine and an ethical approach that will allow readers to reflect and move towards a more qualified attitude to mortality. The book meets the need to transform medicine into a critical domain of human experience, capable of providing essential services consistent with the naturalness of death and environmental sustainability. As such, it will be vital reading to academics in the fields of psychotherapy, analytical psychology, psychiatry and medicine, and those with a philosophical or sociological background. Cover Title Copyright Dedication Contents List of figures Acknowledgements Introduction PART I A metapsychology of the doctor’s consciousness 1 The story of Asclepius The birth of Asclepius and the symbolic origins of medicine Asclepius’s childhood, from Chiron to Prometheus The Asklepieions and the medical tradition Beyond Prometheus: the end of tragedy and the coming of dialectic – the rational origins of medicine Nature personified: Pan The Asclepius complex: the descent and death of the god Chiron and unrepressed death Asclepius’s progeny: the breaking up of the archetype and the beginnings of specialization The wounded healer: the present-day relevance of the myth of Asclepius 2 Alfred Ziegler’s archetypal medicine PART II Medicine and society in our time 3 Modern myths in medicine ‘Necessary’ repression The neurosis of life Repression of death and systemic waste: a ‘cultural’ cause of superfluity? The mythology of everyday life 4 Narcissus’s mirror Narcissus and the shadow The loss of the sense of limit Examples of omnipotent solitude Epilogue: the weight of limit and unlimited hope 5 The illusory nature of concretism The inner spectator, the harpsichord 6 Considerations on courage Courage in our time St Anthony’s Fire Perseus’s courage: the indirect vision PART III Life hanging by a thread 7 Illness as an experience of the soul The experience of illness and furor sanandi Solitude in serious illness Time only is our own Life hanging by a thread 8 The globalization of medicine: towards an ecological medicine Index