This work is an exploration of the ongoing significance of sisterly relationships throughout life, bringing together personal narrative with the illuminations provided by myth, fairy-tale, and the deep psychological reflections of Freud, Jung, and their followers. The book suggests that an imaginal return to the relationship with the actual sister of early years is only the beginning; it leads forward to an understanding of how that relationship reappears, transformed, in many friendships and love affairs, and to a challenging revision of the innermost self, and even toward a new way of imagining a woman's relation to the natural world. The book in no way sentimentalizes sisterhood. In her retelling of the familiar story about Psyche and Eros Downing focuses on Psyche's relation to her envious sisters who, she suggests, push Psyche in a way her soul requires. Reflection on this aspect of the story initiates women into an appreciation of how sisterly relationships challenge and nurture, even as they sometimes disappoint and betray one another.

Psyche's Sisters: Reimagining the Meaning of Sisterhood

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Downing, Christine

Mental Health

Harpercollins

Mythopoetic Musings is a gathering of essays and reworked lectures written by Christine Downing during the years since the 2006 publication of her earlier collection Gleanings. Many represent returns to the themes and images, the stories and writers, that have played a central role in her writing and teaching since she began her scholarly career. Amplifications not retractions. As always, they intertwine the academic and the personal and communicate her conviction that a genuinely depth psychological engagement with any theme will inevitably lead us to ourselves. Our stories. As she says, "I have been a teacher and a writer, but really what I have been is a story-teller. I think I can safely tell myself, I'll never stop being one."

Mythopoetic Musings: 2007-2018

Literature & Fiction

Essays & Correspondence

Christine Downing

Christine Downing has graced the campus of San Diego State University, returning like Persephone each spring for the past ten years to deliver the annual lecture named in her honor. Printed here in their entirety, the talks are autobiographical, poetical, literary musings on the subjects that have occupied her for the past ten years, including the Holocaust, memory, the Bible, the Goddess, Martin Buber, Sigmund Freud, the myth of Orpheus, Greek tragedy, and the Imagist poet H.D.Professor Downing's extensive publications on the role of myth in the psychologies of Freud and Jung, and in the contemporary quest for self-understanding, have made her an original source in these fields. Her books include The Goddess: Mythological Representations of the Feminine, Psyche's Sisters, Journey through Menopause, and Myths and Mysteries of Same Sex Love.

The Luxury of Afterwards: The Christine Downing Lectures At San Diego State University 1995-2004

iUniverse, Inc.

These essays are clearly not about play as unseriousness, not about fun and games, a point that should be abundantly demonstrated by the reference to the death camps of the Holocaust. They are about the space, the Spielraum, necessary for the wheel of life to turn soulfully. Christine Downing's essays may be felt to function as a possible prelude to the play of a truly ludic imagination, which, like Buber's "slow medicine," quietly enters the soul, working into the heart, awakening a secret melody to be noticed only later. Preludes, indeed!David L. MillerAuthor of Three Faces of Godand Hells and Holy Ghosts

PRELUDES: ESSAYS ON THE LUDIC IMAGINATION, 1961?1981

Religion & Spirituality

Religious Studies

Myths and Mysteries of Same-Sex Love makes a powerful statement about the realities of gay and lesbian psyche. A gay and lesbian psychic perspective may at first be startling, but once examined, it proves to be unforgettable.-The Advocate

Myths and Mysteries of Same-Sex Love

Parenting & Relationships

iUniverse

Gleanings is a gathering of hitherto uncollected essays written by Christine Downing during the quarter century since the publication in 1981 of her seminal book, The Goddess: Mythological Images of the Feminine. Many of the essays continue her exploration of Greek goddess traditions and other aspects of Greek mythology. Others grow out of her ongoing involvement with the thought of both Freud and Jung. The interrelationship between polis and psyche, city and soul, is a central theme of several of these papers, including those that focus on the Holocaust. Various facets of lesbian and gay experience are also examined.

Gleanings: Essays 1982ý2006

In a series of chapters each focusing on a different goddess or mythical woman, Christine Downing traces her own path of individuation from maiden-daughter to mature woman. A therapist, university professor of religion, and former president of the American Academy of Religion, she writes what is essentially an autobiography with an inner focus on her dreams and fantasies, and their meanings to her. She writes in a direct and intimate way, using to great bit effortless effect her deep culture and wide learning.-The Journal of Analytical Psychology

THE GODDESS: Mythological Images of the Feminine

The Goddess: Mythological Images of the Feminine

Looks at images of female divinity in ancient Greek myths and examines how myths can affect our appreciation of life

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Crossroad Pub. Co

This intensely personal account of the little written-about sacred dimension of menopause combines religious studies with psychology to "understand menopause as soul-event…regarding its symptoms as symbols" and provides insight into what this transition can be like for those women who choose to embrace it as a meaningful part of their lives.

Journey Through Menopause: A Personal Rite of Passage

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Downing, Christine. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Downing, Christine

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Downing, Christine. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Psyche's Sisters: Reimagining the Meaning of Sisterhood

Mythopoetic Musings: 2007-2018

The Luxury of Afterwards: The Christine Downing Lectures At San Diego State University 1995-2004

PRELUDES: ESSAYS ON THE LUDIC IMAGINATION, 1961?1981

Myths and Mysteries of Same-Sex Love

Gleanings: Essays 1982ý2006

THE GODDESS: Mythological Images of the Feminine

The Goddess: Mythological Images of the Feminine

The Goddess: Mythological Images of the Feminine

Journey Through Menopause: A Personal Rite of Passage