Preludes: Essays on the Ludic Imagination, 1961-1981These essays are clearly not about play as unseriousness, not about fun and games, a point that should be abundantly demonstrated by the reference to the death camps of the Holocaust. They are about the space, the Spielraum, necessary for the wheel of life to turn soulfully. Christine Downing's essays may be felt to function as a possible prelude to the play of a truly ludic imagination, which, like Buber's "slow medicine," quietly enters the soul, working into the heart, awakening a secret melody to be noticed only later. Preludes, indeed!
Author of Three Faces of God and Hells and Holy Ghosts |
Contents
Dear ChrisLove Christine | 1 |
Such Stuff as Dreams are Made On | 13 |
What is Theology? | 20 |
All Real Living is Meeting | 28 |
How Can We Hope and Not Dream? Exodus as Metaphor A Study of the Biblical Imagination | 36 |
It Pleased God By Foolishness to Save the World | 51 |
Theology as MakeBelieve A Response to the Theology of Hope | 65 |
Guilt and Responsibility in the Thought of Martin Buber | 85 |
Sigmund Freud and the Greek Mythological Tradition | 155 |
The Silent Goddess of Death and Two Who Paid Her Tribute | 170 |
Two Masters of the School of Suspicion Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud | 182 |
Towards an Erotics of the Psyche | 194 |
Jealousy A DepthPsychological Perspective | 207 |
Poetically Dwells Man on this Earth | 215 |
ReVisioning Autobiography The Bequest of Freud and Jung | 230 |
Visions and ReVisions A Response to James Hillmans ReVisioning Psychology | 247 |
Abraham And Orpheus Be With Me Now | 98 |
God Made Man Because He Loves Stories Martin Bubers Retellings of the Hasidic Tales | 104 |
Daydream | 126 |
The Three Incarnations in Hermann Hesses Magister Ludi | 134 |
Symptoms and Symbols Edward Whitmonts Symbolic Quest | 148 |
Reviewing David Miller | 153 |
The Subliminal Presence of the Goddess in Hebrew Tradition | 252 |
GoddessSent Madness | 265 |
Your Old Men Shall Dream Dreams | 277 |
Acknowledgements | 291 |
Common terms and phrases
Abraham archetypal Asherah Baal Baal-Shem become believe biblical Böll Boss C. G. Jung called child consciousness creative Dante daydream death Dionysos discover divine dream Eichrodt Eros eschatology essay event Exodus experience expression faith fantasy father feel focus Freud and Jung future God’s goddess gods Greek guilt Hasidic Hebrew Hesse's Hillman hope human images imagination important Interpretation James Hillman jealousy journey Jung’s Knecht language legend literal lives madness Mann Martin Buber Marx means Memories metaphor mother myth mythic mythology Oedipus one’s Orpheus perhaps Persephone perspective Peter Camenzind play present prophets psyche psychic psychoanalysis psychology R. W. B. Lewis Rabbi reality realm recognition recognize relation relationship religion represents response retelling seems sense sexuality Sigmund Freud Sophocles speak story suggests symbolic Tanakh tells theology things Thomas Mann Thou tion transformation unconscious understanding vision W. H. Auden word writing YHVH York