Customer Reviews

A Mythic Life: Learning to Live Our Greater Story

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Readers of this book will have sharply diverging reactions to it, and I myself am of two minds. At her worst, Jean Houston can come across like a precocious and hyperactive college kid: flip, full of herself, flaunting exuberance, self-promoting, greedy for catharsis, disorderly ideas sprouting everywhere like psychedelic mushrooms. On the other hand, at her best, she's brilliant, scholarly, profoundly creative, wise, kind, and funny. On the balance, happily, I found the latter set of characteristics predominant here, although the less attractive side of her nature will be readily apparent to anyone unsympathetic to her style and her philosophy. This is an autobiography of sorts, although one in a style that only Jean Houston could conceive: utterly non-linear. What she actually gives us is series of anecdotes from all stages of her life, interspersed chaotically with a fireworks display of philosophical musing, human potential pep talks, New Age proselytizing, scientific speculation, and lectures on her original brand of mystical anthropology. Interestingly, she's the daughter of neither a scholar nor a mystic, but of an itinerant Hollywood gag writer, whom she loved dearly and who ran the family like an overbearing-but-lovable gypsy king. Numerous accounts of his lautish stunts pepper his daughter's book and bring comic relief. He was a direct descendent of Sam Houston, the flamboyant Texan general and politician, laying down a genetic strain that seems not at all improbable once you begin getting a sense of what Jean Houston is about. Of her retiring Sicilian-American mother, we learn very little. Dr. Houston's central animating idea, like that of her teacher and colleague Joseph Campbell, is that certain myths are universal among all peoples and all times, including our own, and they are the main drivers of psychological and spiritual essence of human existence. Exploring ourselves in light of these myths is key to fulfilling life - hence the book's title. Jean Houston takes this idea much further than Campbell did, and makes it the centerpiece of the teaching, lecturing, and mystical psychotherapy which has become both her life's calling and her business. This is compelling material and she presents it with eloquence and passion, despite the interference which her manic style at times brings to the narrative. I recommend "A Mythic Life", although it's not for everyone, and readers should be prepared for what they're getting.

For some time now I have heard my aunt refer to "Saint" Jean Houston. When this, her new book, came to the bookshelves I thought that it was high time I saw what all the fuss was about.

I was most pleasantly surprised with it. I must admit that I read it with a certain amount of reserve, being somewhat of a skeptic where "mythology" is concerned.

Each chapter starts with a story which lends insight to the author and the amazing life that she has led. "A Mythic Life" will leave you thinking. It will have you examining your life as it is at the moment. In short this is a life changing book.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is looking for some ways of realising their full potential.

I have never taken the time to review a book before, but after seeing the reviews posted for this book, I feel like I owe it to others who may, like me, read the book description and think that this is something along the lines of Joseph Campbell's works. So first of all, the official book description, and the description inside the dust jacket, bear effectively no relationship to the actual book inside. The book is written in the style of, and acts as if it were, an autobiography. For a certain element of the public, mainly people who are very, VERY into the New Age Movement and people who don't care to think critically about what they're reading, this could pass as legitimate autobiography. To those who are very forgiving, perhaps it could be viewed as the author's self-aggrandized view of her life, even if it may have not actually played out the way she remembers. I'm pretty sure that it's just made-up fancy-talk parading as spiritualism.

For context, this is the person who guided Hillary Clinton, during her First Lady years, through deep trance meetings with the spirit of Eleanor Roosevelt. She claims to have multiple PhD's, but in an interview with Stone Phillips she admitted that she made a mistake about that. According to Columbia University, she never completed the claimed Doctoral Program. She did receive a PhD in Psychology from Cincinnati Union Institute (an "alternative education program") in 1973. The Institute actually became accredited 12 years later. She calls herself a "psychologist," but the New York State board says that she is not accredited, and is not allowed to use that title. These are some of her less wild claims. The book is full of wild claims about her life, including the time that she was intended to die in a car crash but she entered into an alternate time frame, similar to the "alternate temporal program" that she teaches, which allowed her to "switch timelines" from the future that she was intended to enter, where she would be killed. For the next day or so, she could feel the "ghost pains" of the wounds she was intended to receive and die from. If reading this doesn't make you pucker up a little, then you may like this book.

I tried very hard to give this book a chance. I have a soft spot for romantic dreamers and New Age types. I'm almost one myself. The point where it finally really upset me was reading about an encounter in which she happened to be at a talk being given by Jewish philosopher and theologian Martin Buber, during which Joseph Campbell, who happened to be in the audience, stood up and made a remark about the daily presence of God in the lives of Hindus. I remembered reading about the same encounter in one of Joseph Campbell's books. But in this book, Jean Houston, undergraduate, just happened to have found herself seated on the floor, unwittingly, at Mr. Campbell's feet because no chairs were available for her. Amazing! In fact, she loves dropping names in this book, and seems to be almost Forrest Gump-like in her ability to insert herself into notable situations.

My final statement about this book will be that it is full of the kind of meaningless but flowery talk that allows the gullible to think it is science, but keeps spiritualism outside of the circle of science, and prevents it from being taken seriously by anybody who thinks critically. Here is an example of the "new physics" that Ms. Houston spouts -- I'll quote the entire passage:

"Get rid of all the empty space in an atom and get down to its essential hard substances, and you haven't got much left. Take the remaining material substrata of the atomic structure of all living human beings, put them together, and what have you got? Matter the size and weight of a very heavy grain of rice."

While this sounds authoritative, and one can imagine a scientist performing calculations to arrive at this estimate, it makes absolutely zero sense. While it's true that most of the volume of matter is effectively empty space, that empty space has no mass. If you removed the empty space from my body, you'd have a very small lump of mass that still weighs 170 pounds, just as it did with all the empty space. In short, this book is full of nonsense, and while I'm in favor of keeping an open mind about things, I recall a quote from someone who said that it shouldn't be so open that your brain falls out. Trust me, you don't want to waste the hours of your precious life reading this garbage.

Through sharing fascinating details of her entire life and family, as well as people she has known and worked with, such as Margaret Mead, Jean Houston demonstrates vividly how we can all be more fully awake to our lives and the myths we all live by, whether we consciously know them or not. Reading her stimulates the reader to want more of her writings, which are plentiful and available.She also has a website worth pursing, at Jean Houston.org. An enjoyable read.

After hearing the esteemed, distinguished artist, poet, preacher personality as narrator and inter-locature for Deepak Chopra and James Hillman, I've read or listened to her everyday for months! Their tour of "Mythical Journey" came to Glen Memorial the EMORY Campus Church with packed house. There was a stage full of video cameras++ beautiful backdrops for a future TV show on NPR!

Listening to her dialogue with Deepak from "The Evolving Human," becomes obvious how Houston is continually evolving in her naive talents: "for writing limericks, cooking gourmet meals or being able to talk to dogs." In fact, one of her many books is The Use of Spiritual Theraphy with Animals! Her epic-autobiog, A MYTHIC Journey has exceeded any possible evaluations in hearing her at Glen Memorial.

The high-light Chapter of Altered States lifted me thru her own experience under LSD in Greenwich Village with a guide, Michael Corner, empowering her to use a dramatic exchange as part of her practise of pschotherapy! Those pages carried me smack into the request of help from eminent Gestalt psychologist, Fritz Perls to visit him in his Central Park Apartment. All these incidents were encouraged by Margaret Mead.

Her Mentors from age 12 included awesome, Tielhard de Chardin, she knew only as, "Mr. Tayer," Joseph Campbell, Paul Tillich, Reinhold Niehbuhr, Margaret Mead, Martin Buber. Then I read that she conversed with Helen Keller, Annie Sullivan, Mother Teresa, the Aldous Huxley Family.

It strikes me, she just as well included: The OT Prophets, Major Poets of England, even Jesus' disciples in the NT!

What an awesome, brilliant, encouraging, inspiring, genius of one single-minded personality! Semi-retired Chap. Fred W. Hood

This book is an absolute gem.

A mind-blowing, fascinating autobiography written by a master storyteller and teacher, conveyed with great intelligence, passion, and humor. Houston goes into wonderful detail about her fascinating childhood (she's the daughter of a Hollywood comedy writer, for one thing) and ensuing life (which includes infamous consultations with Hillary Clinton that all but crucified Ms. Houston in the media).

I highly recommended this book.

This is possibly Jean Houston at her most inspired and clear recalling of her encounters with amazing and intriguing people, such as her Sicilian grandmother,the biologist,priest and philosopher,Pierre Teilhard De Chardin,and anthropologist,Margaret Mead.

The larger than life images of Hollywood studios, the outrageous joking of her father in the face of her Catholic traditions, and her attraction to Greek myths are built up as we also discover her love for food.

Few people bubble over with as much exuberance as Jean, but she is at least as powerful in raising all of our visions of our ultimate fulfilments (De Chardin's entelechy)

This is a very nice book about wild flower meadows around the U.S. and he authors thoughts as he explores them. It has nothing to do with the description of the book or the comments or reviews. Some technical problem. This needs to be corrected. The book is about wild flowers and is the book pictured. Everything else in the official and unofficial reviews is about another book. Whats going on?????????????????

Jean Houston is a gifted writer and speaker. In this book, Jean reminds us that our myths have power within them. They reveal our soul and ways we manifest ourselves into daily living. In so doing, our divine and human qualities merge into a sacred human path. -- Samuel Oliver, author of, WHAT THE DYING TEACH US: LESSON ON LIVING.

I don't know how true any of this book really is (I mean, without doing your own research, how true can you tell is any book someone writes about their own life?), but as a story of someone who followed the Hero Journey that Joseph Campbell often spoke of, I enjoyed the book a lot. Read it as fiction, or not, it still is fascinating to read.

Yeah, a bit too much name-dropping on occasion, but it made me want to go out and explore the world, both the bounds of this physical earth and that of the spiritual realms.

I've put this work right on my bookshelf next to my Joseph Campbell and have recommended it several times to those looking for a deeper experience of their own lives. Along with it, I would suggest reading "Faces in the Smoke" by Gersi.