ABSTRACT

Modern Myths and Medical Consumerism is concerned with the loss of a sense of limit in technological medicine today, and the way in which the denial of death leads to an uncontrollable, consumeristic multiplication of needs. Taking its starting point from C. G. Jung’s analytical psychology, the book gives a symbolic interpretation based on archetypal, philosophical and socio-psychoanalytic ideas developed through the author’s personal experience, moving from the medical to the psychoanalytical paradigm.

Lanfranchi depicts ideal sources of medicine, based on archetypal material drawn from Greek myth, and discusses the progressive steps of the doctor’s consciousness’ evolution up to contemporary times. Critiquing current medicine and its ‘modern myths’, the book suggests the prevailing model of economic development is unsustainable, and provides prospects of a more contained ecological medicine and an ethical approach that will allow readers to reflect and move towards a more qualified attitude to mortality.

The book meets the need to transform medicine into a critical domain of human experience, capable of providing essential services consistent with the naturalness of death and environmental sustainability. As such, it will be vital reading to academics in the fields of psychotherapy, analytical psychology, psychiatry and medicine, and those with a philosophical or sociological background.

chapter |6 pages

Introduction

part I|54 pages

A metapsychology of the doctor’s consciousness

chapter 1|40 pages

The story of Asclepius

chapter 2|12 pages

Alfred Ziegler’s archetypal medicine 1

part II|62 pages

Medicine and society in our time

chapter 3|21 pages

Modern myths in medicine

chapter 4|15 pages

Narcissus’s mirror

chapter 5|5 pages

The illusory nature of concretism

chapter 6|16 pages

Considerations on courage

part III|27 pages

Life hanging by a thread

chapter 7|18 pages

Illness as an experience of the soul

chapter 8|7 pages

The globalization of medicine

Towards an ecological medicine