The Structure of Biblical Myths

...The biblical material only serves as proof text for the Procrustean bed of a wooden, upbeat version of the Jungian theory of individuation...

...James Hillman's maverick brand of archetypal psychology, his literary grace, has done more to restore "soul" to modern psychology than anyone I know...

...But with the exception of David Miller's Christs of a few years ago, archetypal psychology has either ignored or crudely stereotyped the biblical tradition...

...D.T...

...Does Westman represent a revision, the kind of provocative, evocative explication of biblical figures on a par with Hillman's wonderful essays on the Great Mother, Pan, or the puer aeternusl This is Westman's intention, but the execution disappoints...

...In comparison, Westman is a Jungian ideologue, not enough clinician or trickster...

...It was bound to occur to the proponents of archetypal psychology like James Hillman, I thought, that the biblical style — with its multilayered characters, its suspenseful, unexpressed sense of background, its multiplicity of meanings and preoccupation with the problematic — offered a much richer field for a hermeneutics of soul-making than did the comparatively well-defined types of Greek myth...

...The ample opportunities biblical stories afford for exploring psychological complexity, or for exploding the almighty Jungian doctrine of "Self" — such as one might imagine Hillman doing — are lost here to Westman's scrambled erudition and to his enthusiasm for analogy, evolutionary process, and "wholeness...

...I had looked forward to this book...

...Readers wanting the "structure of biblical myths" that Westman is a/ter would be wise to reopen Erich Auerbach's classic Mimesis, or spend time with Northrop Frye's The Great Code...