Modern Myths and Medical Consumerism: The Asclepius Complex (Research in Analytical Psychology and Jungian Studies)

__Modern Myths and Medical Consumerism__ is concerned with the loss of a sense of limit in technological medicine today, and the way in which the denial of death leads to an uncontrollable, consumeristic multiplication of needs. Taking its starting point from C. G. Jung’s analytical psychology, the book gives a symbolic interpretation based on archetypal, philosophical and socio-psychoanalytic ideas developed through the author’s personal experience, moving from the medical to the psychoanalytical paradigm. Lanfranchi depicts ideal sources of medicine, based on archetypal material drawn from Greek myth, and discusses the progressive steps of the doctor’s consciousness’ evolution up to contemporary times. Critiquing current medicine and its ‘modern myths’, the book suggests the prevailing model of economic development is unsustainable, and provides prospects of a more contained ecological medicine and an ethical approach that will allow readers to reflect and move towards a more qualified attitude to mortality. The book meets the need to transform medicine into a critical domain of human experience, capable of providing essential services consistent with the naturalness of death and environmental sustainability. As such, it will be vital reading to academics in the fields of psychotherapy, analytical psychology, psychiatry and medicine, and those with a philosophical or sociological background. Cover 1 Title 4 Copyright 5 Dedication 6 Contents 8 List of figures 10 Acknowledgements 12 Introduction 14 PART I A metapsychology of the doctor’s consciousness 20 1 The story of Asclepius 22 The birth of Asclepius and the symbolic origins of medicine 22 Asclepius’s childhood, from Chiron to Prometheus 26 The Asklepieions and the medical tradition 30 Beyond Prometheus: the end of tragedy and the coming of dialectic – the rational origins of medicine 31 Nature personified: Pan 35 The Asclepius complex: the descent and death of the god 39 Chiron and unrepressed death 40 Asclepius’s progeny: the breaking up of the archetype and the beginnings of specialization 44 The wounded healer: the present-day relevance of the myth of Asclepius 49 2 Alfred Ziegler’s archetypal medicine 62 PART II Medicine and society in our time 74 3 Modern myths in medicine 76 ‘Necessary’ repression 76 The neurosis of life 79 Repression of death and systemic waste: a ‘cultural’ cause of superfluity? 81 The mythology of everyday life 83 4 Narcissus’s mirror 98 Narcissus and the shadow 99 The loss of the sense of limit 102 Examples of omnipotent solitude 104 Epilogue: the weight of limit and unlimited hope 109 5 The illusory nature of concretism 114 The inner spectator, the harpsichord 114 6 Considerations on courage 120 Courage in our time 120 St Anthony’s Fire 123 Perseus’s courage: the indirect vision 126 PART III Life hanging by a thread 136 7 Illness as an experience of the soul 138 The experience of illness and furor sanandi 138 Solitude in serious illness 143 Time only is our own 147 Life hanging by a thread 149 8 The globalization of medicine: towards an ecological medicine 156 Index 164 "Modern Myths and Medical Consumerism is concerned with the loss of a sense of limit in technological medicine today, and the way in which the denial of death leads to an uncontrollable, consumeristic multiplication of needs. Taking its starting point from C.G. Jung's analytical psychology, the book gives a symbolic interpretation based on archetypal, philosophical, and socio-psychoanalytic ideas developed through the author's personal experience, moving from the medical to the psychoanalytical paradigm. Lanfranchi depicts ideal sources of medicine, based on archetypal material drawn from Greek myth, and discusses the progressive steps of the doctor's consciousness' evolution up to contemporary times. Critiquing current medicine and its 'modern myths', the book suggests the prevailing model of economic development is unsustainable, and provides prospects of a more contained ecological medicine and an ethical approach that will allow readers to reflect and move towards a more qualified attitude to mortality. The book meets the need to transform medicine into a critical domain of human experience, capable of providing essential services consistent with the naturalness of death and environmental sustainability. As such, it will be vital reading to academics in the fields of psychotherapy, analytical psychology, psychiatry and medicine, and those with a philosophical or sociological background."--Provided by publisher