The Act of Reading as Mythic and Poetic Motion of Soul

Lecture Description

The act of reading, especially if it is not in search of data, information, facts, and explanations, is closer to a journey of what C.G. Jung has called individuation. In this process, one strives to become the fullest expression of who and what one is destined to be.

This lecture will explore the presence and effectiveness of an energy field constructed between the reader, the text, and the relationship as the third thing that springs up between them. To read is always to be reading from an in-between state or disposition. Reading is then a rite of passage through the written passages that comprise the plot or the argument of the work being read. Both the text and the reader bring something to the conversation, such as their own intensity and type of vitality. They exchange these vitalities in the act of reading as a form of interpenetration. 

Dennis Slattery suggests in this lecture that both the reader and the text come to the act of reading and being read as both reciprocal, with each having their own form of consciousness and unconsciousness.

This lecture is ideal if

• Learning how the act of reading is a mutually interactive exploration of the work read and the work’s reading us the reader.
• Approaching reading as a way of meditation and dialoguing with the unconscious.
• Learning of reading can be perceived as a rite of passage