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Wisdom of the Psyche: Depth Psychology after Neuroscience, by Ginette Paris
In this rare and intimate excursion of the soul’s vast garden, Ginette Paris provides not only the much needed gardening tools, but also a detailed map for which the rest of us can follow, as we traverse the often tangled and withering inner workings of the invisibility of the psyche. Within the first few pages we are transformed into naturalists of the soul, gaining an inexplicable understanding of how we feel loss, how we breakdown or decompose, suffer, change, rot, stagnate, laugh, cry, bloom, how we live and how we die.
In the natural world, there is no waste in nature. Every fallen leaf, every dead and withered piece of organic material is either recycled, reused or restored. Paris skillfully walks us through the environment of psyche and soul so that we soon discover that there is also no waste in human nature.
She furthers our journey by providing us with ideas and stimulating the imagination for how to take this understanding and create a more meaningful life. Addressing how we can find fertility and humus in the wounds and traumas that have plagued us, how to discern what in our monster-filled closet deserves redemption and what does not, how to see through the veil of our mythic patterns we repeatedly replant with family, friends and partners that inevitably clutters our garden with weeds and leads to loss and despair.
As a naturalist seeks the deepest meaning of nature, so Paris seeks the deepest meaning of psyche. In this book, Ginette Paris adeptly maps out the alchemy of maturation. Through scholarly research, psychological case studies, history, and most importantly, personal experience, she shows us how to recycle, reuse and restore what we previously considered dead or lost parts of our soul. She shows us how to see through the bitter to the sweet, to mine the wisdom of the psyche.
Lori Pye, Ph.D.
Director, Institute for Cultural Change
www.instituteforculturalchange.org
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