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Wisdom of the Psyche: Depth Psychology after Neuroscience

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As a person with nearly 20 years of experience in the Pharmaceutical industry (working in Neuroscience) and developing interests in depth-psychology, I was intrigued by the title of Ginette Paris' work: The Wisdom of the Psyche: Depth Psychology after Neuroscience. Her book, however, contained very little on "Neuroscience." It did however, contain a great deal on a variety of topics relative to depth psychology. Paris asks an important question; what is the future of depth psychology given the takeover from neuroscience and pharmacology? She answers that question by stepping back from the medical and psychodynamic models to engage the subject mater at an archetypal level relayed through her own personal and traumatic confrontation with death, the unconscious, and a miraculous recovery. Her experience is supported by a number of case histories from her practice. Paris takes a bold stance, stating that depth psychology is not to be lumped in with the sciences. While the field of depth psychology was discovered by scientists, taking a scientific approach, depth psychology is not a science. Thank You Ginette! Depth psychology is not a science because its subject matter, the psyche, is not amenable to reduction; psyche is not reproducible, verifiable, or willing to be contained, defined or restricted at any level. The field of depth psychology is closer to that of the humanities, where key to working with psyche is an ever evolving dynamic imagination. In reality depth psychology fits neither in the sciences or the humanities; it is In-Between, just as its fundamental intrinsic nature is In-Between.

While I enjoyed all of Paris' book, I found her last chapter entitled "Joy: The Antidote to Anxiety" the most important for our society. Paris draws an important distinction between "fear" and "anxiety." While "fear" has an object, "anxiety" does not; the object of our anxiety is "hidden." Our society is a society suffering from anxiety (I would call it chronic, low-grade stress). Regardless of the terminology, anxiety shuts a person down and, I believe, suppresses the immune system resulting in an entire host of medical conditions that I as a neuroscientist have worked to develop drugs for (e.g., anxiety and depression). The role of anxiety in other disease states (e.g., cancer, heart disease, obesity, etc.), for which neuroscience does not concern itself, should not be overlooked. While anxiety shuts a person down and suppresses the immune system, fear calls for action (and, I believe, stimulates the immune system), flight or fight being the two basic instincts of survival. A millennia of evolution has provided our species with mechanisms for dealing with fear. We, however, do not seem to have developed an evolutionary response to anxiety. Paris addresses the problem of anxiety from the position of depth psychology, stating that, "anxiety comes with the loss of images." Paris tells us that, in our culture, we have replaced images with concepts and fear with anxiety. Our culture has worked very hard to free itself of oppressive mythologies, but unfortunately has distanced itself from the imagination that created those mythologies. The loss of imagination, necessary for the creation of vital invigorating mythologies (both collective and personal) is trauma for the psyche and disease for the body. Paris points out that it takes a healthy imagination--an artistic compromise--to balance the requirements of the ego with the orientation of the Self. Paris reminds us that this balancing (i.e., Individuation) is similar to what the Greeks would have called the lifelong quest for harmony.

On a more personal note, I found, Paris' work as a valuable guide on my own journey of self-discovery. Of particular value, were the weaving of her own personal account and those of her clients into her discussion on the archetype of the Mother and the archetype of the Father. I feel that I would have saved a great deal of time (and money) had I had this information available to me during my own therapeutic process. I am not saying this book is or should be a replacement for "therapy." It is, however, a valuable aid in the therapeutic process and I recommend Ginette Paris' book to anyone on their inner journey of discovery.

I have already recommended this book to two people, neither is a
therapist or a depth psychologist. I didn't want to put the book down
once I began reading. The entry into the book and the experience of the
Underworld is riveting. It never occurred to me that
one would be so completely conscious when the body is so
traumatized. Dr. Paris' writing about this journey takes you
right along with her. There is mystery surrounding the loving care
she receives from a Mexican woman attending her seriously damaged body,
and who cares even more for her soul. And there is the miracle of healing
that emerges from the deep love between the newly fragile mother and the strong
daughter who takes charge. This story of a serious physical accident and its unlikely
outcome opens the door to what cannot be touched by neuroscience.

This is a wonderful book. It broadens our understanding of the ways in
which the archetypal psychological perspective can benefit us both individually,
and as participants in society. Dr. Paris' brilliance as an archetypal
psychologist is plainly visible. The pages are filled with wisdom and insight,
very creatively expressed. I highly recommend this book.

I am a Pacifica graduate (Depth Psychology) who teaches several psychology-related subjects at Bay Area campuses, and I plan to share with my students--particularly Depth Psych students at Sonoma State--some of my delight with Paris's clear, forcible writing.

The book's title should probably be considered a point of departure because relatively little of the book deals with DP's relation to neuroscience, although it does begin there with a severe crack on the head. To me the book felt like an excursion through many layers and levels: psychology, philosophy, spirituality, myth, science, feminism (not really an "ism"), personal accounts, even therapy client narratives. Like psyche the book roams but without ever departing from its inherently self-organizing central motifs, one of which is how DP is to understand itself. What is its role in a world of DSM-style categorizations and in a nation like the U.S. where half the population lives on psychotropic medication?

In part this book is a project of deconstruction. Its targets include organized religion's imagination-killing counterphobic emphasis on belief, the psychology/psychiatry industry's willingness to medicate symptoms instead of listening to them, unnecessary oppositions between cognitive-behavioral work and DP (I particularly appreciate this from having worked for six years with violent men referred for mandatory therapy), and therapy sold as a kind of secular salvation. Paris also criticizes the authoritarianism of exalting one theory over another: "Any ideology that tries to reduce words to their utilitarian or technical meaning turns out to be a totalitarian one." Her wit also shines through, as when she offhandedly remarks that literalists have ruined the word "miracle" for the rest of us.

I finished the book thinking about its call to consider DP a separate realm of endeavor from "science," with the depth traditions more in league with the humanities than with the fantasy of objectivity. As a research instructor who teaches both quantitative and qualitative methods, I found myself wondering whether we need consider the paradigm laid down by Francis Bacon the only way to do real science. It seems to me that aligning DP with the humanities runs the risk of abandoning the definition of science to the positivists and materialists instead of challenging us to ask whether science can be, say, artistic, or literary, or more depth-oriented than crunching numbers. When Jung told himself he was a scientist, his anima disagreed and said he was doing art, true enough: but if the unconscious counterbalances the conscious mind's narrow focus, perhaps the truth was somewhere in between....

I was glad to see Pierre Janet mentioned. He seldom appears in the DP literature. It is unfortunate that despite Henri Ellenberger's own deconstructive work we have tended to believe Freud's description of Janet as wedded to physiology when in fact he created what might have been the first fully dynamic system of depth psychology and was among the first to listen to symptoms and conflicts for their symbolic modes of discourse.

I hope Paris writes more about these topics because her mercifully jargon-freestyle of exposition is itself a graceful demonstration of her love for image and myth and depth. I plan to assign this book in some of my graduate courses. I've also read her other books and warmly recommend them too.

Review by Lyn Cowan Ph.D., analyst and author

Lyn Cowan is a Jungian analyst practicing in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She has served as Director of Training and then as President of the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts. She is the author of: "Tracking the White Rabbit: A Subversive View of Modern Culture" and of: "Masochism: A Jungian View". This review was written for the members of the International Association of Jungian Studies.
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Every once in a rare while a book comes into one's hands that is so satisfying that it's hard to write about it without drenching every sentence in superlatives. This is such a book. So I am exercising as much self-restraint as I can so as not to destroy my credibility ("Oh, it can't be that good!"), and I will try to harness my passion for the excellent writing and a fluid style that glides the eye right along the pages of this book. I have long believed that style - the manner in which one presents oneself, either verbally, or in fashion, or gesture - is much deeper than a superficial socially-constructed persona: style is substance, the package which carries the content, and the content is not separate from the package. Paris's jargon-free language invites us to look into the windows of her agile mind without making us feel intrusive. She writes personally but not confessionally, is emphatic but not dogmatic in her positions, and speaks to us with controlled passion and dry, sparkling wit.
There are weaknesses in this book - every book must have some. The subtitle ("Depth Psychology after Neuroscience") is somewhat misleading, as there is not as much about neuroscience as one would expect. The chapter titled "Brother Philosophy, Sister Psychology" could have been tighter; though interesting, it still felt too digressive. There were some lines here and there that didn't sit quite right, but my memory traces of them are too faint to note. In my view, the book's few shortcomings pale beside the richness and quality of thought that characterizes nearly all of Paris's work, and so they kept slipping out of my mind. Readers of Wisdom of the Psyche will have to find their own complaints.
The first chapter is titled, "Denting My Thick Skull," in which Paris sets the personal context and then describes her horrific fall into an empty concrete swimming pool in New Mexico, the life-threatening brain injury that resulted, and her recovery. This by itself is an amazing account, told from within that inert body as Paris notes the unexpected, frightening, unintelligible and often achingly beautiful events that are transpiring within and around her.
Like a wounded bull collapsing in the ring, I feel myself dying. It is just as well, for my heart is already dead. Soon there will be no body to suffer the failure of love. Pain, all modalities of pain, would all be over if I let this fragile bird or butterfly the Greeks called "soul" take flight. I shut my eyes and fall into a deep hypnagogic state where I seem to hallucinate a diaphanous butterfly hovering over my head like a minuscule parachute that might be able to carry away my soul. I am awake, yet this fantasy has the reality that images have in dreams, as if dreams are oozing through my injured brain. (p. 3)
Death becomes attractive, seductive; but life, the bull, is not ready to release its hold. From within her "cracked head" Paris observes that chaos can be freeing.
The chaos of physical pain is breaking me open, like cracks in the wall that let the light in. Strapped to my bed, there is nothing I can do. I can only be. I feel a sublime surrender to the bruising, cleasing process of destruction. The person that I was, and could not tolerate being, is being killed. I find repose in this destruction.
It is what happens between injury and recovery that makes a most compelling story, and a most unusual one: not only were the odds very much against her living at all, but we don't often have such a deep, lucid, personal, moving, insightful, and wise account of that happening. And the rest of the book is an unfolding of some of the most important lessons that came out of that experience. So the chapter title is in a sense a metaphor all of us share in - we all have thick skulls about a lot of things that could use denting. One of the pleasures of reading Paris's book is that she takes us from the personal to the collective and back again, and she can do this because she is firmly anchored in the reality of the psyche, and its wisdom is not hers alone but belongs to all of us.
The book has a circular structure, moving from the inside of Paris's injured brain to the outside world, and returns to the inside again in a final chapter, examining the experience of pervasive anxiety we all feel, and - what may come as a surprise - anxiety's antidote: joy. In between, Paris's practiced hand moves surely (not heavily) among philosophy, depth and social psychology, feminism, mythology, and clinical psychotherapeutic practice, weaving a tapestry of related ideas that are good, useful, and interesting ideas, necessary ideas. They come alive not only because they are informed by Paris's extensive range of academic knowledge, but because they speak to and for a deep appreciation for life in all its complexities and varieties, and with a voice made sure and purposeful by having been so nearly permanently silenced.
While many Jungian authors have critiqued and criticized mainstream psychology, and while many of the ideas in this book are not especially original, Paris presents them with freshness and accessibility that I hope will give these ideas wider dissemination among clinicians, academics, and a general readership. Paris is one of the most concise and articulate observer/critics of the culture in general and psychology in general, and one of the few who offers a corrective vision, and a wider one: we are encouraged to look to other discplines to understand our own.
Readers of Paris's earlier books, Pagan Meditations (1986) and especially Pagan Grace (1990), are already familiar with Paris's consummate ability to make mythic figures visible in the usually-unnoticed patterns of individual and collective life, and to give us artful and immediate observations of how we are all affected by social movements such as feminism and New Age fluffings. In Wisdom of the Psyche Paris is at her best, bringing all her formidable intellectual force to bear with the same dexterity of language as before. But this book has something more, born as it is from a life that completely changed in an instant in that fateful fall. I felt a warmth in this book (unusual given its subject), an approachability to the author, and a deep well of compassion, even while Paris wields her pen like a sword to cut through some of our illusions and most cherished ideas and theories - which, as often happens, sometimes turn out to be little more than store-bought prejudices. And Paris has a wonderful sense of humor which complements rather than undermines her great love of ideas and life itself.
Paris examines the philosophy and practice of psychotherapy in a variety of models: the medical model, the economic model, the legal model. And in a powerful chapter she dispels the idea of "therapy as redemption." Given the contemporary American preoccupation with and prejudices about religion, and what seems to be a growing insistence on "faith and values" in every arena, from pulpit to politics, Paris demonstrates that psychotherapy is most effective and true to the nature of the psyche when it does not offer redemption from suffering, pain, and damnation. And it should be noted that the focus on "healing," predicated as it is on conventional medical-model ideas of "normality" and "abnormality," is at best a misleading notion, often confused with religiosity or spiritual "growth," and may work against the psyche's natural desire to deepen and know itself. "The attempt to `fix a soul,'" Paris writes (p. 25), "diminishes life, it harms the psyche, it dries up the seed of wisdom."
In addition to many examples from Paris's own life, she gives us brief vignettes in each chapter that effectively, and often affectively, illuminate the point she is making. These vignettes are the stories - I will not call them "cases" - of real people with whom Paris has worked therapeutically - I will not say "clinically" - and they each carry a seed of wisdom of the psyche.
In what I felt was the strongest (that is, personally most exhilerating) chapter of the book, "Boundary Issues: `You, science. Me, humanities.'", Paris puts forth a resonant differentiation between depth psychology, which belongs to the humanities, and the medical and biological sciences. By such differentiation each field receives its due and is valued, and we are liberated from impossible hopes and expectations that psychotherapy, masquerading as a quasi-medical procedure, will deliver us from evil, and that medicine, masquerading as the final answer to impossible questions, will deliver us from death. In this chapter, woven through with references to Paris's own near-fatal fall, she always defends the rich complexity of psychic life and the sustaining mystery of human emotion.
Psychological wisdom is the goal of an analysis. If wisdom is replaced by formulaic diagnoses and inflexible treatment plans, the quality of presence is lost. There is among young psychologists fresh out of school an optimism, an innocence, a naivety, and an inflation that is one of the results of an overly technical training. They are led to "believe" in their theories. They are taught to approach psychological suffering through all sorts of theoretical grids, processing all human emotions and life's complications as "problems" that this or that theory can solve. All the stories they hear go into a theoretical blender and come out in the form of a slush of "should" and "should not." Just as we have the techno-optimists, who believe that new technologies will bring the planet together, we have the psycho-optimists who believe that loss, angst, heartbreak, love triangles, fear of pleasure, fear of freedom, fear of life's adventure are all wounds that can be healed with the proper techniques. (p. 90)
These are strong words but not heartless polemic. Paris might also be speaking of clinicians who have been practicing for years: we all run the risk of ideological entrenchment and of dispelling doubt about our effectiveness by holding fast to old ideas and theories we suspect may not be as true as we once "believed." I found the tone of the book throughout that of a provocateur who entices into discussion with a smile, and this was one reason (among many) I found it so intellectually satisfying. Paris doesn't constellate counter-argument in the reader so much as she constellates a self-questioning attitude. I found myself asking what I really think about the ideas she introduces rather than wanting to argue against her. And this, I think, is just the sort of attitude that makes not only for pleasurable reading, but keeps us in that cloudy area of self-reflection and receptivity to our own doubts, just that inner space where we live with uncertainty, ambivalence, and ambiguity. Indeed, all these uncertainties and ambiguities are where most of us live most of the time, but where we also most immediatley experience the reality of psychic life. And this is where we are most likely to stumble into some new way of thinking, some new creative jolt that helps us lurch into a new attitude and out of old conventional thinking. "Life is generous," writes Paris, "it gives you one body but many selves." (p. 129)
And this book is generous too, as the author opens some of her many selves to speak passionately to us about, and with, the wisdom of the psyche.

Dr. Paris boldly expresses her intimate perceptions of not only her inner process, but of the intellectual milieu of her profession. The depth and width of her education are clearly evident, but what spoke to me most profoundly was her courage in her own voice. I experienced this book as a proclamation that has been brewing her entire career, and finally became unleashed following her own confrontation with death. Thankfully, that confrontation did not end in demise, but resulted in renewal and a sense of empowerment that no doubt will benefit her relationships and scholarly endeavors. I highly recommend this treatise for those interested in the field of inner work, and especially to those hungry to hear a strong woman accessibly speak her truth.

Ginette Paris's most recent book is a refreshingly practical look at depth and archetypal psychological approaches to modern man/woman's inevitable conditions of suffering and success. In easy to understand language, Professor Paris shares some professional and personal insights as she skillfuly combines psychological theory, case examples and excerpts from her own life story. I particularly enjoyed the conversations between Paris and her philosopher brother.
As a student in the mythology program at Pacifica I found the book a delightful read and a welcome addition to my collection and I recommend it to others engaged in understanding Jung and Hillman's vast work in the context of archetypes and how they can present in one's life.

This is a brilliant portrayal of what depth psychology is, and an application of it in real life that calls for a new approach to psychology for all of us. Its true that I am a student of depth psychology, however, Paris' book is so approachable without jargon and intimidating or obscure references, that even those without a psychology background, can pick it up...but I caution you if you do...you will not want to put it down! It is absolutely gripping...a perfectly balanced weaving of multiple provocative and informative strands, including a very beautiful human lived experience of "applied depth psychology". I have purchased (3) additional copies, other than my own, and given to friends not in the field. This is not a "psychology" book, it is a book that opens your mind and heart to consider a new way of being in the world...one that requires a bracketing of the materialistic science-only model, allowing the bigger story of wisdom and mystery to uplift and inform our experience.

I was going through a very difficult time in my life, when I read "Wisdom of the Psyche". Its insights, well . . . I don't know what I would have done without them. It was like being in a free fall without a parachute, and then a friend catches up to me, and then opens up, and hands me a canvas to grab onto and sail to safety with them to the ground. I am deeply grateful for Genette Paris' contribution to my life.

Join Ginette Paris on two intrepid and intermingled journeys: one in which she recovers from an almost fatal accident and one where she attempts to save depth psychology from killing itself.

In describing her recovery, Ms Paris writes some of the most lucid and compelling prose I've ever read on depth psychology. We are witnesses to one of the most Beautiful experiences possible: that of the imagination preserving a life. It's a "five tissue" story, not because it's sad, but because it reveals Truth so eloquently.

The remainder and bulk of the book argues a future for depth psychology based on what this unique, troubled, fearsome and life-changing beast can offer that science, medicine, economics, mediations, and redemption cannot: the work of the imagination and its power to heal, transform, and inspire. To my view, there's not a lot that's new here, but it's told freshly and gathers together the best of thinking in the field. There are deft explanations of some archetypes, some enlightening case studies from Paris' own patients, and the occasional dire rant about how soulless this old world is. It's a mixed bag, but what would expect from the profession that reinvigorated the bricoleur?

But do join Ms Paris for these intertwined journeys: if you love the imagination and the Sysiphean task of trying to understand it, I suspect you'll be awestruck and inspired, and determined to continue on your own journey of "unconscious" discovery, as I was.

This book is a must read for anyone remotely interested in psychology. I am not a psychology student or professional. Even so, I was profoundly moved and changed by this book. Dr. Paris is so courageous and personal in her approach... so potent... so clear... Start your journey with this one.