Following are a few insights from some of Robert's books I recommend.

THE FISHER KING &
THE HANDLESS MAIDEN

The Fisher King: The wounded masculine

In the story of the Fisher King a young and naive prince is mortally wounded by an impulsive act of bravado. It is his creativity, generativity, and masculinity that are injured and he is left "too badly wounded to live, but unable to die." Unable to feel warmth or pleasure, his only solace is in solitary fishing.

Many men are wounded fisher kings now. This wound is to be seen on the face of almost any man who passes on the street; the ache of life, the anxiety, dread, loneliness, the corners of the mouth pointing down....It is the sense that life has lost its savor, or a fortune that one cannot enjoy, a marriage where there is an unbridgeable gulf between the partners, a fine body that no longer brings the runner's high that used to thrill one, the sound of applause that no longer affirms the performer.

The Handless Maiden: The wounded feminine

In the myth of the Handless Maiden a miller makes a deal with the devil in order to get more work done quickly and with less effort. The devil demands the miller's daughter as payment. "The miller is desolate but unwilling to give up his much expanded mill, so he gives his daughter to the devil. The devil chops off her hands and carries them away." Waited on her by newly prosperous family, the handless maiden is content for a time, until a growing sense of desperation sends her out to the forest alone.

The cry of contemporary women, like that of the handless maiden, is often some variation of "What can I do?"-a wounded, sometimes angry plea appropriate in a world that often makes women feel useless and second-rate outside of the realms of courtship or childbearing.

Parallel and divergent experiences of men and women

As the tales of the handless maiden and the fisher king illustrate, women and men suffer differently and much of the tension and lack of communication between the sexes spring from this difference. What is wounded in each is the ability to feel-to find joy, worth, and meaning in life. Robert A. Johnson's thoughtful analysis of these two timeless myths elegantly reveals the parallel and divergent ways men and women experience and overcome alienation and recognizes how the story of the king speaks to the masculine side of women, while the tale of the maiden addresses the feminine side of men. Reminding us that "a real myth always provides a healing or cure for the ill that it describes." Johnson draws from these stories a healing heroic path for women and men.

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OWNING YOUR OWN SHADOW

In this powerful work, popular Jungian author Robert A. Johnson explores our need to "own our own shadow"-the term Jung used to describe the dark, hidden aspect of the ego or persona. Johnson guides us through an exploration of the shadow: what it is, how it originates, and how it is formed through the process of acculturation, and the havoc that it can wreak if not absorbed.

"It is (also) astonishing to find that some very good characteristics turn up in the shadow," writes Johnson. "Generally, the ordinary, mundane characteristics are the norm. Anything less than this goes into the shadow. But anything better also goes into the shadow! Some of the pure gold of our personality is relegated to the shadow because it can find no place in that great leveling process that is culture,," writes Johnson. Curiously, people resist the noble aspects of their shadow more strenuously than they hide the dark sides."

Johnson sees the "owning" of one's shadow a means by which wholeness is restored to the personality. This is accomplished by coming to terms with the shadow and incorporating it into the conscious self.

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TRANSFORMATION

In Transformation, Robert Johnson offers a new model to understand the stages of personal growth to achieve maturity and wholeness. Using three quintessential figures from classical literature-Don Quixote, Hamlet, and Faust-he shows us three levels development that are to be completed to experience the self-realized state of completion and harmony.

We are all Don Quixote, Hamlet, and Faust at various stages of our lives. They represent levels of consciousness that live inside us, vying for dominance, one winning one moment, another the next. Don Quixote is the innocent child in us all, unaware of life's pain. Shakespeare's Hamlet represents conscious imperfection, a man divided between the opposing forces within himself and full of despair in the face of the tragic nature of life. This is the state of the modern Western person-aware of one's shortcoming, anxious over what to do, neurotic and incomplete. As a result, modern Western culture has historically dismantled the more natural societies it has encountered, leaving entire populations stranded in the purgatory of this second level of consciousness.

The third state, conscious perfection-the state of the fully integrated person-is represented by Goethe's Faust. His is an awareness that has been gained by struggling with and working through the second level of consciousness-a journey that is both painful and dangerous and of particular pertinence to our contemporary culture. It is Faust who, through his own inner work, restores to wholeness the life he had torn apart to achieve the ecstatic, visionary, enlightened consciousness of which we are all capable.

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HE

A Jungian psychological interpretation of the Grail Legend; the journey of individuation as experienced by the archetypal figure Parsifal. This book is an excellent introduction to masculine psychology through a classic European tale.

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FEMININITY LOST AND REGAINED

Using the Oedipal myth and the Hindu myth of Nala as examples, Johnson illuminates the dynamics of feminine energy as it functions within men and women.

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LYING WITH THE HEAVENLY WOMAN: UNDERSTANDING AND INTEGRATING THE FEMININE ARCHETYPES IN MEN'S LIVES

Johnson brings clarity and profound insight to the interior world of feelings, values, moods, and intuition. Some subjects include the mother complex, the mother archetype, the sister, the anima, and the wife.

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CONTENTMENT: A WAY TO TRUE HAPPINESS

Johnson and Ruhl explore the many gifts of contentment-from energy and spontaneity to dreams and ordinariness-showing how we can integrate them into our daily lives. They envision contentment as a "dance between your wishes and reality, (between) what you want and what you get," and they teach us how to do this dance until you're "in love with the moment, not just dutifully accepting its but passionately, rapturously embracing the eternal now."

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INNER WORK: USING DREAMS AND ACTIVE IMAGINATION FOR PERSONAL GROWTH

Through a practical four-step approach, Robert demonstrates how our dreams and imagination can be transformed into an active, creative part of our lives. He calls this technique "inner work" because "they are direct, powerful ways of approaching the inner world of the unconscious." Using dreams from real case studies, Johnson guides the reader through a simple program for analyzing one's own dreams, enabling us "to search the hidden depths of our own unconscious to find the strengths and resources that wait to be discovered there."

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WE: UNDERSTANDING THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ROMANTIC LOVE

We retells the myth of Tristan and Iseult, one of the earliest romance tales, and uses it as a reference point to explain the essence and meaning of romantic love. Employing Jungian philosophy, Robert uncovers many of the unconscious beliefs about love shared by both sexes and shows how these attitudes are expressed symbolically in the Tristan myth.

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BALANCING HEAVEN AND EARTH: A MEMOIR OF VISIONS, DREAMS, AND REALIZATION

This is a moving and instructive memoir in the traditions of Carl Jung's Memories, Dreams, and Reflections, Robert A. Johnson's delightfully candid, profound, and entertaining reflection on his seventy-five years of life reveals his mystical visions, encounters with modern sages, holy men, and con-artists, and the wisdom of a lifetime devoted to balancing the inner and the outer, the masculine and the feminine, the eternal and the everyday.

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ECSTASY: UNDERSTANDING THE PSYCHOLOGY OF JOY

Reviving the myth of Dionysis, this book elucidates and brings to us the importance and need for an ecstatic vision of human consciousness. Johnson offers many avenues through which each one of us can find and enjoy inner ecstasy and ecstasy in our connection to the collective unconscious and to each other.

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