Transforming Psyche by Barbara Weir Huber (review)

humanities 335 well, however, and the narratologically picky may profitably read his book as a contribution to the novel's reception history, especially to the rich tradition of psychological reinterpretation both of the novel and of its inset myth. Gollnick does full justice to that tradition in his lucid surveys of the approaches of his predecessors, both Freudian and Jungian (his sympathies lie more with the latter B as, excessively in my view, did those of Robertson Davies in the libretto of the recently premièred opera version: getting in touch with one's inner archetypes may be the stuff of psycholiterary criticism; when rendered explicit at the climax of a performance, it makes for somewhat indigestible art). To good effect, Gollnick brings his expertise as a practising psychotherapist to bear on the dreams themselves and on the ancient theories and practices of dream interpretation. These latter are clearly relevant however one reads the novel, and Gollnick displays them lucidly. He has one gem which he holds until near the end: Artemidorus, Oneirocritica 2.123, that dreams of `Serapis, Isis, Anubis, Harpocrates in person as well as their statues and rites and every story that is told about them' signify salvation for those in trouble and for those not in trouble `crises from which salvation will come when one's hopes and expectations have been abandoned.' In Winkler's sense, this should surely be Gollnick's hermeneutic `master text.' Finally, two minor but significant omissions. The dream of the return of the slave Candidus, who turns out to be Lucius's lost horse, surely alludes, as others have noted, to the white horse of reason in Plato's allegorizing of the soul in the Phaedrus; an instance, then of the `Platonic philosopher' (as Apuleius was known) constructing a suitably Platonic dream for his hero narrator. Likewise overlooked is the significance of the context of the one slip from narratorial to authorial persona: it is precisely in a dream that Lucius becomes the `man of moderate means from Madauros.' (ROGER BECK) Barbara Weir Huber. Transforming Psyche McGill-Queen's University Press. 256. $60.00, $24.95 Barbara Weir Huber's Transforming Psyche is an account of the psychosexual development of the Psyche figure in Apuleius's The Golden Ass, or rather, of how that figure may be read as a model of, in Erich Neumann's phrase, `the psycho-sexual development of the feminine.' Huber builds on numerous previous interpretations, tilting her own towards more current feminist psychology: `to use ancient myths to illuminate the experiences of present-day women and ultimately to provide positive and affirmative ways for understanding women's ``examined'' lives.' Her seven-chapter reading of Apuleius is followed by an interesting but very brief, almost 336 letters in canada 1999 perfunctory, discussion of some seventeen `Lifeprints,' or modern women's autobiographies (seven of them Canadian), in terms of their shadowy `Psychean' structures, as she has been developing the term throughout the book: I use 'Psychean' ... to emphasize[] possibility and opportunity, that sees work, growth, relationship and spiritual connection as integral within embodied experience, and that suggests the complexity of the learning that is possible beyond dichotomies. Huber concludes with her own `rewriting' of the Psyche story in a more modern vein, with J. Arthur Hanson's translation of the Apuleian original serving as appendix. A critic quoted on the back cover rashly suggests that Huber's work constitutes `a feminist response to Neumann's powerful classic Amor and Psyche'; I only wish it did. Or rather, that that, or any other, clear proposition about the interpretations and counter-interpretations of the Psyche myth emerged from reading the book. It suffers, perhaps unfairly, from the implied comparison: Neumann speaks in his own voice, and is lucidly, not to say compulsively, readable; I have to confess that I turned back to him with relief, not for his ideology, but for his style and method of argument. Huber's bibliography and her knowledge of relevant scholarship, whether mythographical, psychological, feminist, or some combination of the three, are awesomely complete and immensely helpful, with the reservation that, perhaps inevitably, in the time-scale of university publishing, they start thinning out in...