Synopsis

The wisdom of the aniconic lies buried in myth and folktale and entails the most inchoate readings of “O”. The content of these myths runs from fairy tale to sacred geometry. I was fascinated by the notion of the “axis”, as in “axis mundi” ("axis of the world"), which suggests to me a whole new reading of the contact barrier in general and of the repressive barrier in particular. The function of the axis is to define the stabilising centre, so as to enable the experience of balance. “Being” and “Becoming” are the axials to metamorphosis and transformation.

Reviews

This is an utterly profound work. Eric Rhode seeks to explore a domain that has long been missing in psychoanalytic psychology: the ineffable domain of ontology or existence . He describes a multi-layered, numinous domain that engulfs the most ordinary reaches of our lives but has remained barely known to us.

James S. Grotstein, M.D. is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA School of Medicine and is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Institute