Non-Fiction
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Synopsis
Summary
Almost everybody is agreed that the works of Shakespeare are not just brilliant artistic creations but also communicate something fundamental about the human condition. Nevertheless, four hundred years after his death, there is still a surprising amount of uncertainty about how to interpret them. Indeed, in the case of arguably Shakespeare’s two greatest plays, King Lear and Hamlet, the foremost minds have failed to give an adequate account, with some claiming the works are the result of artistic liberty (Coleridge, Bradley, Bloom) and some of artistic failure (Johnson, Voltaire, T.S. Eliot).
In this book, author Simon Sheridan aims to enhance our understanding of Shakespeare by presenting a new method of interpretation that draws on the work of Joseph Campbell (the hero’s journey) and Carl Jung (the archetypes). Beginning with the simple proposition that every story is about the transformation of the hero, Sheridan analyses seven of Shakespeare’s greatest plays using a rigorous and repeatable framework that both unlocks the meaning of individual works such as Hamlet and King Lear and allows a comparative overview of Shakespeare’s oeuvre as a whole.
Having established a base of interpretation, Sheridan then elucidates the higher-level themes in Shakespeare’s art. The Bard repeatedly poked fun at the philosophers of his day and their focus on the static forms of existence. By contrast, his works foreground the process of transformation and change. Shakespeare confronts his heroes with identity crises of the highest magnitude, but he also endows them with an incredible clarity of consciousness. The result is that his works are an exploration of those aspects of existence that philosophy and religion had deliberately ignored. We call it the journey into the sacred.
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Synopsis
Is it possible to live your life as if it were a work of art? Can we go one step further and become the authors of our own lives rather than side characters in another’s story? These were the dangerous ideas that Richard Wagner used to “corrupt” a bright young philology student named Friedrich Nietzsche. Just as Socrates corrupted Plato into becoming the founder of Western philosophy, so would Wagner corrupt Nietzsche into becoming one of the philosophical giants of the modern age. In the terms that we will use in this book, Wagner initiated the younger man.
Wagner’s initiation was predicated on the idea of living life as if it were art. This was no mere theoretical exercise. It was how the composer lived. Nietzsche remarked that their initial meeting was like “living in a novel”. In this book, we will relate the story of the relationship between the two men, beginning with the incredible coincidences that brought them together in 1868 and ending with the dramatic episode that split them apart in 1878. It is a story of love, truth, deception, and betrayal, the equal of any of Wagner’s operas.
The story of Nietzsche and Wagner was a lived story, and yet, it has all the hallmarks of a novel, a myth, or even a fairy tale. Therefore, it challenges our distinction between life and art, fact and fiction. That’s fitting. Wagner and Nietzsche wanted to go beyond the Greek “know thyself” and pursue a new task — “create thyself”. This book is the story of their journey towards that lofty goal.
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Synopsis
In this introductory volume, Simon Sheridan outlines a framework for understanding human nature that places the concept of the archetype at the centre of analysis. The model revolves around four primary archetypes inspired by the psychology of Carl Jung – the Child, the Orphan, the Adult, and the Elder. With these and just a few other core concepts, archetypology provides a succinct but powerful framework that expands the archetype concept beyond the psychological to integrate nominally discrete domains such as biology, anthropology, history, and literature. The result is a holistic account of human development centred around the pattern of the cycle-ending-in-transcendence.
The book includes several extended case studies that demonstrate the power of the model while also providing new insights into a set of diverse topics from Western history and culture, including the rise of modern feminism, the life of Martin Luther, the stories of Shakespeare, and the loss of the Elder archetype in the 20th century. Archetypology follows from another 20th-century trend, which was the desire for a holistic antidote to the endless ideological schisms of the modern world. As such, it can be seen in the same light as the work of Jan Smuts, Jean Gebser, Abraham Maslow, E.F. Schumacher, and Ken Wilber. However, archetypology is not a self-improvement or self-help system but a rigorous, concise, and powerful model of human nature that aims to give the reader a map by which to make sense of the world, a map which places humanity (the Human archetype) at the centre.
Gregory Bateson once wrote that humans think in stories. With archetypology, we go one step further and say that humans are stories.
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Synopsis
In this sequel to his 2021 book, The Devouring Mother: The Collective Unconscious in the Time of Corona, author Simon Sheridan follows the archetypal breadcrumbs in search of the historical basis for the psychological drivers that increasingly dominate our modern world. Drawing on the work of the great comparative scholars Joseph Campbell, Arnold van Gennep, Oswald Spengler, and Arnold Toynbee, Sheridan expands the concept of the archetype beyond the domain of psychology to integrate biology, anthropology, literature, and, especially, history. The result is a unique synthesis that posits that the unfolding of civilisation proceeds according to the same pattern as an individual human life: a cyclical process punctuated by dramatic periods of transcendence.
Having developed the model, Sheridan then uses it to provide an archetypal history of western civilisation. He finds that the development of the modern West can best be understood as an alternation between the idolisation of the archetypal Father inherited from the late Roman Empire – the medieval era, the Renaissance, Napoleon etc. – and the rebellion against the Father which begins with the Reformation, proceeds through the British Civil War, the US War of Independence, and more. Sheridan combines analysis from psychology, anthropology, literature, film, and history to demonstrate that the archetypal patterns resonate across the biological, social, psychological, and spiritual realms.
The book culminates in a luminous account of the post-war years with the ascendancy of the nation that, more than any other, had rebelled against the Father: the United States of America. Sheridan argues that the peculiar form of politics wielded by the US is the direct result of the rejection of the archetypal Father, leading to an empire that has become increasingly run not on masculine forms of dominance but on feminine; in short, the Devouring Mother.
The Universal State of America is a brilliant work of synthesis. Inspired by the work of Gregory Bateson, it looks for the pattern which connects. It is a hero’s journey about the hero’s journey of civilisation, a descent into the unconscious mind of the modern West, and a return from the belly of the beast. It is a modern response to an ancient challenge: know thyself!
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Synopsis
Those who fail to incorporate the shadow are doomed to project it. In the modern materialist West, we don’t merely fail to incorporate our shadow, we deny its existence. In The Devouring Mother, author Simon Sheridan takes a journey into the other half of the psyche looking for an archetypal explanation for the social ructions in western society over the last several years beginning with the Trump and Brexit votes and reaching earthquake proportions with the corona event.
Drawing on the work of the great Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung, Sheridan makes the case that the archetype that has been dominant in the west for several decades is The Devouring Mother, a shadow form whose primary qualities include gaslighting, emotional manipulation and guilt tripping all in the name of protecting her children. Sheridan switches between the microcosmic and the macrocosmic to show how The Devouring Mother permeates all levels of society from interpersonal relationships and employment through to large scale political and social movements including corona. A mother implies children and Sheridan identifies the two archetypal children of The Devouring Mother as the acquiescent and the rebellious. In so doing, he provides an explanation for the Trump and Brexit rebellions in politics as well as the broader psychological and cultural drivers inherent in the rise of both Jordan Peterson and Greta Thunberg. He shows that the corona event did not come out of nowhere but represents an escalation of the existing battle going on in the unconscious mind of the West; a battle that is increasingly moving into consciousness and therefore represents the process Jung described as individuation at both the individual and the societal level. The time has come for the West to face its shadow: The Devouring Mother.
Synopsis
“Those who tell the stories rule society” – Plato
Societies run on stories. But in the modern west, we believe that we are above stories; we are scientific. It is partly because of this (story!) that we are often blind to the stories we tell ourselves. In this book, I analyse the structure of the story we have been telling ourselves about the corona event: the plague story. I look at how the plague story unfolded and who has been telling it. The structure of that story dictates both what has happened so far and what needs to happen to bring the matter to an end.
There’s just one problem: corona is clearly not a plague. Therefore, our willingness to accept it as such needs explanation. In the second half of the book, I sketch out the larger social and cultural themes that have been at work. Among these are our growing biophobia and denial of death, our continuing belief in the myths of heroic science and progress, the tension between technocracy and democracy, the economic and cultural realities wrought by globalisation and how the corona event fits within the founding and dominant ethos of the modern west: heroic materialism.
The Plague Story is a work that draws inspiration from the systems thinking and cybernetics movements of the 20th century. It is a multi-disciplinary series of essays that aims to place the corona event in the broader cultural and philosophical context of modern society. If you have the feeling that the story of corona is not quite right, this book aims to provide a framework for understanding and a guide to meaningful re-evaluation.
Paperback edition also available through Book Depository and Booktopia (AUS).