Amor and Psyche, the psychic development of the feminine: a commentary on the tale by Apuleius ed. by E. Neumann (review)

Book Reviews 117 coffeetable type. This is a review that has to be read, rather than grace the salons of bourgeoisie, as with for example FMR. It is politically com­ mitted, but to human and humanist values rather thantoanypoliticalorreligiousideologyorethnic group in this most complex of regions. Yet it is accessible, friendly, andmakes a definitive break withthe format ofanacademicjournal whichitis not (nor aims to be). Indeedthis is the review’s strength. By devel­ oping a format and an identity which is distinc­ tive, the editors and publishers have, hopefully, filled an important gap in the market. My onlyreservations have to do with some of the choices of material. Some of the paintings reproduced are a bit boring, stereotypical, and anodyne. They resemble the paintings found in poster shops and liable to be framed and hung up toadd some ‘colour’toEnglishhomes, mainly to demonstrate that the owner has some affinities with the Mediterranean. As the editors are well aware there are some excellent painters and photographers in the re­ gion, whose images should also be seen outside thearea.Thiscouldalsoincludenon-representative art andgraphic art (whichwouldreproduce better given that the printing is in black and white). I suspect that the editors felt more comfortable in selectingliterarymaterial.Duotoneprintingwould alsoprobablyhave enhancedthequality ofrepro­ duction. Likewise the editors have gone for the ‘big names’ in Mediterranean literature, rather than probably equally good but less well known authors (both from within the region and from outsideit), whoseworksshouldalsobeexposedto the Anglo-French reading public. But these are minorobjectionsandtheeditorsandpublishersde­ serve every encouragement for having the cour­ age and the vision to develop a review which is rich,varied,widerangingandadelighttodipinto. Paul Sant Cassia University of Durham Neumann, E.; translated by Ralph Manheim. Amor and Psyche, the psychic development of the feminine: a commentary on the tale by Apuleius. Bollingen Series LIV. Princeton: University Press, 1990. 181pp. ISBN 0-69101772 -7 (paperback). £8.95. Neumann, who died in Israel in 1960 at the age of 55, published a series of articles (in the EranosYearbooks) andseveral books, andmaybe regarded as an avatar of the Great Father C. G. Jung. The present book, firstpublishedinGerman (1952),comprisesinthistranslation(firstappeared 1956) areprint ofH. E. Butler’stranslation (1910) ofAmor andPsyche (taken from The GoldenAss, more famously translated by Robert Graves) (50 pp.) followed by 110 pages of ‘commentary’ by Neumann(whoin 1952usedAlbrecht Schaeffer’s German translation of the tale). Neumann probes the psyche of Psyche to elucidate the evolution offemale consciousness (die seelischenEntwicklung des Weiblichen). It is an essay in the by now well-known vein of Ich-Psychologie studies of folk-tale symbolism and harks back to the nienteenth-century shibboleths (for example, J. J. Bachofen) which insisted (‘argued’ is too strong a claim) that the classical texts of the ancient Mediterranean sufficed for the construction of an evolutionary record of civilizations and the mental life of persons. The basic technique ofinterpretation is to treat the codifications ofmyth, hero-legends, ancient dramas and rituals on the one hand, and dreams on the other, as the same, as though both were the products of sleep which is to say ‘regression’ (p. 122) to unconscious pre-life imagery (Jung’s archetypes ofthe unconscious, but for Neumann the dwelling-place of gods). Be that as it may, Neumann argues the case for a pan-human feminine psyche ‘restricted to no one culture, or cultural sphere’(p. 116); this psyche is, among other things, ‘centro-verted’, its self in touch with the body, a phenomenon which in males is not sustained throughout life as it is in females; achieving, through the competitionssetbyhermother-in-lawAphrodite; wise, being moon-like, ‘vegetative’ (p. 101) as opposed to the solar dangerousness and destruction ofmale spirit; and self-reliantrather than dependent on men (p. 110). And so on and so on. All the dream-like, self-enhancing, liberating ideals which could be applied to women—creativity, immortal beauty, eternal youth, feminine individuation, total conscious­ ness, infinite love—are here explained. Mediterranean feminists take note. W. D. Wilder University of Durham ...