Reviews for Sacred Psychology of Change: Life as a Voyage of Transformation

The average rating for Sacred Psychology of Change: Life as a Voyage of Transformation based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-12-10 00:00:00 Sunil Massey Revised and updated review. My evil twin, Skippy, summed it up succinctly: "This is some heavy sh*t. By the way, can I borrow the keys to the car tonight and go to Tampa?" The side of me that stays "home" says this is a challenging book, highly nuanced, but worth your time. John Sanford was (he died in 2005) an ordained Episcopal priest. After 19 + years as a parish priest in Los Angeles and San Diego, Sanford retired from the priesthood to become a Jungian mental health counselor and the author of a number of books on - among other subjects - Jungian psychology, dreams and dream interpretation. Evil was first published in 1981. My edition is only 154 pages. A relatively short book, the book deals with two related but different issues: Evil and the Shadow. Make no mistake: they are not identical, despite what the title would suggest, as Sanford argues.The contributors to the Zweig and Abrams anthology, mentioned below, would agree. Evil Sanford approached evil primarily through the lenses of the Judaeo-Christian religions (as well as Islam, Zoroastrianism) and Jungian/archetypal psychology: the religions, because that's where the historical struggle to understand evil'its existence, its source(s), its purpose(s), its power, etc.'has and continues to take place; psychology, because the secular approach reflected in Jung and his adherents seems to be where Sanford has the most intellectual traction. He is very critical of Christianity's historical unwillingness to see evil other than in dualistic terms (good is good and evil is evil, world without end, amen) with no ultimate reconciliation. The chapters on "the Problem of Evil" in mythology, in the Old Testament, the role of "the Devil" and the Problem of Evil in the New Testament are decent overviews (not too deep) of how evil has been treated historically and theologically. He touches on the difference between "moral (human) evil" and "natural evil"- two concepts ridiculously conflated by Pat Robertson when he pronounced the destruction of Hurricane Katrina (which Sanford would probably have classified as "natural evil") as God's wrath upon the "moral evils" of New Orleans. Sanford is equally critical of what he believes are Jung's glaring inconsistencies in his writings, positions he articulates in the final chapter of the book "The Ontology of Evil". He does not, however, approach the subject of evil as an expression of or component of political theory or practice or even comment upon it. For example, there is no mention of Hannah Arendt's work, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. (Arendt herself was the subject of intense criticism from Jewish colleagues and writers for positing that Eichmann's particular brand of "I-was-just-following-orders"-evil, and the cold-blooded murder of millions of Jews in the Holocaust was "banal" - i.e., ho-hum, unoriginal, etc. How any person would or could wrap her mind around the degree and magnitude of such evil is beyond this discussion, and apparently, beyond the points Sanford wanted to make in his work, which was to explore the nature of evil itself, not the effects of it, either as expressed in garden variety sin or unspeakable criminal events.) The Shadow Yes, Virginia, there is a Shadow'and she'll be coming down your chimney and leave a sack full of issues under your tree if you don't show her some respect. Readers who are familiar with and fascinated by the subject of the Shadow, i.e., the dark and repressed parts of our souls and psyches, (and so named by C. G. Jung), will find a pretty thorough treatment in Sanford's book of this archetype/concept of duality and "otherness" within us. All God's children got Shadows'"that part of the personality that has been repressed for the sake of the ego ideal." It's there from childhood; ignore your Shadow at your peril. The Shadow is not the same as a "doppelganger", although the Shadow can become one and swallow a person's ego consciousness, as Mr. Hyde became and did in Robert Louis Stevenson's novel. Indeed, one of the chapters of this book, "The Problem of the Shadow and Evil in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" addresses this issue head-on. (This chapter is also contained in the excellent anthology/overview of this topic, edited by Connie Zweig and Jeremiah Abrams, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature, a book I recommend without reservation. A number of contributions in that book make it very clear that you don't fool with the Shadow. It's not a parlor game. Those with a keen interest in the Shadow that becomes the "master", and a strong constitution, might want to check out Robert Jay Lifton's The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide, in particular the chapters on the phenomenon of "doubling" - the splitting of the self into two, separate, functioning wholes--one of which commits genocide, the other goes home and dandles his child on its knee and pretends there is no blood on his hands. Once you've learned their attributes, you'll see them even now. Just watch the news...

Review # 2 was written on 2014-05-21 00:00:00 Claudia Harrison This year I started teaching my students to consult the references portion of Wikipedia entries to find viable sources for their papers. While I don't let them quote the content of the page, many of the sources in the references section are great. This book is sort of like a Wikipedia entry in that it is an awesome book to mine for sources elaborating on evil. For that reason it is a great starting point for people who want to explore the subject from a philosophical perspective. Is it seminal? Not necessarily, but it'll steer you in the direction you need in order to find seminal works on the topic, and it'll provide you with a decent overview. Evil sells. Most of the time, it is a term used to conjure up age-old anxieties, most of which have little to do with evil if you're a rational human being. When I researched the term for a paper on the connotations of evil, I found so many books about cults and countless right-wing conspiracy texts. Evil is a multi-faceted word, and most of those facets are generated by the batshit crazy. This book will help you cut through all of that without wasting heaps of time sorting through the latest diatribe about the evils of rock music, thinly veiled racist manifestos about the evils of urban culture, the satanic underpinnings in Spongebob, and all the other bullshit the morally anal-retentive try to pass off as evil.