Dionysos Archetype Of Individuation

Perseus

Perseus is a Hero. A demigod. The son of a mortal mother and a God. He is of our world but with roots in the Godhead. Better yet, he is rooted in both the instinctual sphere and the phenomenal world. He was isolated, described and fashioned by the best phenomenologists that ever walked upon the face of this earth, the Greek mythographers. He is only one of many demigods they created, as their understanding of the internal aspect of nature was extensive and beyond compare. In terms of the individuated developmental equation, he is the first. He is the foundation stone and the bedrock upon which the independent masculine personality is assembled. Provided he has completed his heroic destiny, and thereby acquired the capacity to survive as an independent psychological entity of course.

The Greeks provided us with the story of Perseus' heroic quest. In this chapter I place their phenomenology into its position within the second phase of the individuated developmental equation. I then proceed to demonstrate the detailed dynamic of how the individuated ego completes its archetypally assigned maturational task. Dream and symbol interpreters should feel like kids in a candy store here, as the challenges posed by the symbolism of Polydektes, the Naiads the Graiai, the Gorgons, the Gorgon Medusa and Andromeda must be deciphered and fit into the big picture. No this is not jig saw puzzle. It is more like Pepita handing over the completed choreography for a ballet to Tchiakovsky and then telling him to write the music.