ABSTRACT
This chapter argues for the recovery of the notion of a secularized descent into hell, in which the psychoanalytic tradition completes and corrects the Christian religious and secular, scriptural and literary, legacy. The secular descent into hell is an encounter with primitive passions. There is a pilgrimage through the depths of passion and despair that must be taken if the soul is ever to arrive on firm ground in clear possession of a vision of the end of human life and history. Obviously, the secular pilgrimage into the netherworld of the psyche asks a great deal of communities that may view animal spirits with alarm or of any society that enshrines and attracts the most grandiose and destructive of human emotions to the shrines of its own national devotions. The secular pilgrimage into the psychic underworld will uncover not only the depths of what is uniquely personal but also experiences and symbols that are irreducibly social in nature.
