The Mythic Imagination: The Quest for Meaning Through Personal Mythology

Excerpts & Samples

By Stephen Larsen

Publisher : Inner Traditions/Bear & Company

ABOUT Stephen Larsen

Stephen Larsen
Stephen Larsen, Ph.D, is Psychology Professor Emeritus at SUNY Ulster and the author of The Shaman’s Doorway and The Mythic Imagination and coauthor of Joseph Campbell: A Fire in the Mind. He has been using the LENS clinically since 1996 and biofeedback since 1975 in his psychotherap More...

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Description

Mythology is the universal tongue of human imagination. As a tool for self-discovery, mythology is also a way of gaining access to the secrets of the psyche. The Mythic Imagination is a quest for the ancient source of vision and meaning in the world of dream, myth, and archetype. In the footsteps of Joseph Campbell, Stephen Larsen guides the reader on a journey through the mythic landscape of the psyche. His insight is that all of us, at one time or another, are engaged in creating personal mythologies that reflect the larger myths of the culture and our own deepest desires and aspirations. This book is a guide for bringing the deeper mythic structures of experience into awareness, for learning to recognize the archetypal content embedded in our dreams and daydreams, feelings, beliefs, relationships, conscious creations, and behavior. 

Student and authorized biographer of Joseph Campbell, Larsen teaches us how to bring myth into our lives.

Reissue of the Bantam bestseller.
"Stephen Larsen has achieved a synthesis of mythic story, psychological theory, and clinical experience that extends the work of his teacher, Joseph Campbell, toward a more practical understanding of the relevance of myth for each of us."

David Feinstein, Ph.D., author of Personal Mythology



"An extraordinarily rich and wide-ranging compendium of the psychological uses of mythology. Stephen Larsen has given us stimulation for the mind, a feast for the imagination, and a multidimensional road map for the soul in quest of its truth."
Roger J. Woolger and Jennifer B. Woolger,
Authors of The Goddess Within and Other Lives, Other Selves.