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

Daniel Deardorff (Author), Robert Bly (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 2004

Hailed by scholars as a major breakthrough in the field of myth and psychology, this brilliant new study by Daniel Deardorff proposes that a certain poetic consciousness is generated by those who inhabit societal and psychic margins. This consciousness is identified as 'Trickster-wisdom', a subversive virtue that provides creative and innovative benefits to the very same society that invalidates and excludes its so called 'misfits'.

Editorial Reviews

Review

... rare is the expression of otherness from the perspective of otherness. This is one of those rare books! -- David L. Miller, Watson-Ledden Professor of Religion Emeritus, Syracuse University and Core Faculty Member, Pacifica Graduate Institute

About the Author

Daniel Deardorff

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: White Cloud Press (October 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1883991595
• ISBN-13: 978-1883991593
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,732,174 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Daniel Deardorff is a "Singer" in the old sense of the word, which involves being a musician, a storyteller, and a maker of ritual. He has been a composer and a performing artist for more than four decades. As an independent scholar of myth Deardorff's emphasis is on associativity and the performative aspects of mythic expression. He is the author of The Other Within: The Genius of Deformity in Myth, Culture, & Psyche. He is also the founder of The Mythsinger Foundation http://www.mythsinger.org and the Mythsinger Consortium http://www.mythsinger.net an online community devoted to myth, ritual, and the mythopoeic arts.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Genius, September 14, 2006

By 

Ruby Sara "RS" (Tennessee) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Other Within: The Genius of Deformity in Myth, Culture, & Pscyhe (Paperback)

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.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Trickster Wisdom, March 6, 2007

By 

Piper Drake (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Other Within: The Genius of Deformity in Myth, Culture, & Pscyhe (Paperback)

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.