This is a ‘heady’ book – heady in at least
three ways. It is an extremely intelligent
analysis and critique of the field of
psychology today, both within and
without academia. In this it succeeds
in what Paris announces as one of her
goals in the Preface: “to make a critique
of my field, an inventory of what is useful
and what is dead.”

But it is also ‘heady’ in the sense that
it is full of brilliant, often poetic, nuggets
of wisdom and insight that both startle and
satisfy the reader eager for new or original
ways to envision psychological reality.

For example: “The pursuit of consciousness,
of wisdom – even of happiness – is the
opposite of treatment.” ‘The psyche is,
above all, complex. It dances with history,
evolves or regresses according to the evolution
of culture.” “Despotism, tyranny and revolution,
fundamentalism, heresies, triangles, alliances
and betrayals, all the causes of war have their
parallel in family life where psychic combat is
a daily occurrence. A normal family does not exist.

Constantly, throughout the book, Paris is there with
her intellectual Brillo pad, scouring away illusions,
clichés and sentimental notions of what we often think
of psychological health and family harmony.

Finally, Wisdom of the Psyche is heady because the
author gives many examples, especially from her own
life, of psychological experiences that both move and
inspire the reader. This fulfills what she announces
as her second goal, which to take “ordinary
experiences of inferiority, brokenness, failure and
pain and to test the (psychological) theories against
my own experiences of suffering.”

The first chapter, “Denting my Thick Skull,” in which she
describes her nearly fatal backwards fall into a dry
swimming pool and the time spent in intensive care
and the parallel stories of outer medical care and
inner psychological voyage, is just simply stunning.
We feel we are in the IC bed with her as the cold nurse
who reminds her of her own rejecting mother alternates
with inner butterflies and bulls and compassionate
Great Mother who together create an alternate,
and ultimately more healing energy.

I think this chapter illustrates better than anything
else in the book what she set out to do,  i.e. to show
the importance of image and myth and inner voyages
in bringing life back to what she calls today’s “unhappy
souls who suffer what we could call emotional hypothermia.” 
(See what I mean by nuggets?) Again and again she will
return to the themes of imagination and myth-making,
saying depth psychology belongs not to science but to
the humanities and the arts.

Some examples of ‘nuggets’ that I think capture this
message well: “Defining abnormalities belongs to the
medical profession and to neuroscience whereas
defining normality depends on the power of one myth
over another.” “Analysis is not so much a cure as it
is an education, like learning a new language,
a philosophy, an adventure in self-discovery,
an art of living more lucidly and intensely.”
“The medical model is inadequate to make sense
of the agony and the ecstasy of our life because
the tragic, comic, epic and lyric genres are
inherent in the human narrative. Artists, not
doctors, give us the words and images to become
conscious of when and how we suffer and when
and how we rejoice.”
 
I quote what I call these ‘nuggets’ because they
capture an essence of what I believe the author‘s
message to be, and the book is full of such clear,
enlightening beacons. However, it is sometimes
hard to find them in the pages of extremely dense,
sometimes hard to follow, critical text. With the
exception of the first and some of the last chapters,
I had the notion that the book might better have
been called The Wisdom of the Psyche and a
Detailed Discussion and Description of all the Attitudes
and Old Myths that Keep Us From Hearing This Wisdom.

It almost seemed to me that the book was written by
two people. (And perhaps that would fit with the author’s
own ideas on the multiplicity of the psyche) One is an
intellectual with a formidable ability to present and
deconstruct the myriad conceptions and myths that 
mainstream psychologies and therapies maintain about
themselves. The other is an empathetic psychologist
who gives excellent, vivid examples from her patients’
and her own life to show why the conventional psychological
attitudes fall short.

Looking at the intellectual track, we find that chapters
3-6 are all mainly critiques of common attitudes.
We have “Therapy as Cure: the Medical Model,”
“Therapy as Investment, the Economic Model,”
“Therapy as Plea, the Legal Model,” and
“Therapy as Redemption.”

In each of these chapters the ‘as’ is presented and
then deconstructed in favor of soul-making, imagination,
quality of life as opposed to ’victimology’ or  ‘ego pursuit
of happiness’ or ‘who owes what to whom.’

Other chapters also begin with a critique, this time of the
way the Child, Mother and Father archetype are used and
misused in our general collective thinking. How one-sided
they are towards over-maternal, unconditional, coddling
attitudes that neither respect the true wholeness of the
Mother archetype or the need for much more Father presence
in the form of leadership, of conditional love that requires
self-control, discipline and achievement. It would be impossible,
for me anyway, to argue with this content and basic critique.
They are presented thoroughly and deconstructed skillfully.
Her passionate plea for a less rigid, more truly psychological
attitude, expresses itself in touching examples as well.

Still, there are some aspects of Paris’s critical texts in these
chapters that seem to me rather jarring and judgmental
generalizations. For example, in a section subtitled,
“avoiding neurotic contacts,” she says that in order to know
what love is we need to know what it is not. Fine. But the way
she says it – “We know with more certainly what it is not …
somebody on the via negativa is able to smell the destruction
of worn-out psychological patterns,” – implies too much ego
certainty. As if anyone who wanted could simply follow,
‘with certainty,’ the path to avoidance of neurotic contacts.
This statement stands out in her actual text as a little glib
because it is not qualified at all, by, for example,
“anyone who has worked long and hard at understanding
themselves …”  Even if it were, it still implies a fairly
straightforward gymnastic while, in fact, I don’t know
anyone at all who is able to avoid neurotic contacts in their lives!

There seemed to me some glibness too in, for example, a tendency
to take for granted strong ego control and will when discussing
neurosis. “Being neurotic is like a bad habit that wastes what life
has to offer ... the ordinary neurotic personality is like somebody
who possesses a colossal fortune and worries every day when the Dow
Jones index goes down a few points.” Again, there is no qualifier
here. It jarred this reader and came off, ironically, as an intellectual
dismissal of all the very real suffering and complexity of any neurotic
individual, once again seeming to imply that such a condition is mostly
chosen and consciously maintained.

The same attitude emerged in a short discussion of narcissism in which
she describes the narcissism of an individual as a kind of undesirable
self-centeredness that simply needs to be addressed directly
(“Narcissus, who put you in charge?”), to be transformed into a
more satisfying and joyous quality of life. Would that things were so simple.

Then, when addressing the meaning of love and how difficult it is to
define, she points out, for example, that a child cannot show love,
only need, which is proven by the fact that its affections will quickly
change from parent to another good enough caregiver. Again, there
is surely a lot of truth here but the terse, unmodified way in which it
is said seemed too reductive and categorical. In holding a sustained
critical stance such as hers in these chapters, the writer risks hitting
all subjects, regardless of their complexity, with the
same abrasive Brillo pad.

Finally, in her discussion of Therapy as Redemption, the author clearly
and openly states she is agnostic and glad to be so. Let me quote from
these important statements: My generation is perhaps the first in history
to have been so freely agnostic, without the risk of being shunned,
condemned, tortured or burned at the stake ... The God-image
or God principle, this beyond the ego realm of the archetype, is truly
different from traditional religion faith. It does not demand the kind of
obedience that traditional religions have tried (and are still trying) to impose.
It is a radical move away from a posture of belief.  (p. 67 )
 
She is, she says, however, also spiritual, and she talks of how important it
is for her to find spiritual values in other sources such as Greek mythology
and other simply human values that transcend ego reality and purpose.
In spite of the qualifiers, I still could not help but feel a subtle judgment
about those who might still be naive or needy enough to need to ‘believe’
or have ‘faith’ in a traditional religious outlook. Also, I couldn’t help having
a feeling of real disconnect between what she relishes as her personal
agnostic freedom and the simultaneous, but not mentioned fact, that
American religiosity has been increasing exponentially.

Yet, outside of the sense of judgment and disconnect that this reader
did experience, it must be said that Paris is still superb in her
deconstruction of the effects of a rigid orthodox religious position.
What I found may jar but this does not lessen the fullness and true
wisdom that is in this book and the nuggets that are far too numerous
to mention but remain in the mind long after the book is closed.
The last chapters of the book which concern myth-making and soul in
the world confirm this richness. As she leaves the grids of criticism,
the ‘via negativa’  and enters the area she loves, a ‘via positiva’, 
Paris really soars. She has some wonderful passages on ‘mother’
and ‘father’ in the world at large, on our need and ability to keep revising
our own myths, on the difference between fear and anxiety, and how image
and imagination can help to free us from anxiety.

As for the psychologist – the other writer of the book – she provides,
throughout the book, very apt and moving examples of real peoples’
lives to illustrate the difference between what conventional psychology
would make of us and how depth psychology can both enrichen and
deepen our lives.

To conclude, Wisdom of the Psyche is not an easy book. But it is rich,
intelligent and honest and should be read at least twice to appreciate
its richness or, if not twice, then slowly. It is a book that rewards the
reader with a huge store of knowledge, psychological history,
challenges to both intellect and feeling and, most of all, lots of
wonderful metaphors and imagination to chew on.

-Jan Bauer