Dying and Creating A Search for Meaning

Jung devoted much of his attention to the psychology of death, re-birth and transformation. The author acknowledges his creative spirit and the depth of his understanding in this discussion of the many customs, myths, stories and beliefs that surround death and dying. The author shows that a fear of death can deprive us of potential sources of creativity, as these are hindered by paralysing fears.

Dying and creating or, could we put it the other way round, creating and dying? Rosemary Gordon has chosen the first, the challenging title and the one that stimulates the reader to find out how they inter-relate. There are essential links between the facts and the concepts. C. G. Jung devoted much attention to the psychology of death, re-birth and transformation: the author acknowledges her debt to him, to his creative spirit and to the depth of his understanding. As she is a working analytical psychologist, much of the material in her. But she is also a theorist: the human and the academic come together.Many Westerners in the course of their daily lives conceal their fears of death and so they deprive themselves of the possibility of getting into touch with the hidden sources of creativeness. Patients in analysis communicate some of their deepest feelings and thoughts about preparing for death, and grieving, and dying.

Editorial introduction , Introduction , Part I , Social attitudes to death: a brief survey , Freud, Jung and the death wish , On the threshold of death: a pilot study of four dying patients , The birth of death: some African stories , Rites for the dead , Psychopathological ways of dealing with death , Part II , Symbols and symbol formation: the crux of meaningful dying and creating , Reflections on clinical technique resulting from a review of the nature of symbolisation , Part III , The nature of the creative process , Psychological functions in the service of the creative process , Hindrances to the creative process , Death, creation and transformation: their intra-psychic interdependence , Summary , Postscript

Rosemary Gordon