ABSTRACT
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams (W.B.Yeats, ‘He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’)
Long ago, I came upon a book that delighted my mind and spoke to depths of my being that elude analysis. It was Sam Keen’s Apology for Wonder. It is suddenly invading my mind again as I turn to consider the extraordinary freedom with which some children create healing metaphors in their play. Keen uses the imagery of two very different gods, Apollo and Dionysus, to compare two very different models that typify modern man. His descriptions of the Apollonian way of living fit the life-style of many modern Westerners. Logic, pragmatism, and order predominate. ‘Man shares with the gods the responsibility for creating a cosmos in which reason and order prevail. The rule of law is the path of wisdom’ (Keen 1969:153). But there is another way of living. It has its own imagery.
