ABSTRACT
This volume has its origin in a conference held on 15–16 July 2016 at the Freud Museum, London, in a room right above Freud’s study with its ancient statues and sculptures. In some ways, the very title of this conference—‘Ecstatic Ancient/Archaic Thought and Analytical Psychology: An Inquiry’—was an act of defiance, because its subject is exactly counterposed to the dominant discourse in the arts and humanities. According to this discourse, which describes itself as postmodern but might equally well be described as ‘sophistical’, what we are talking about does not exist. On this account, there is no origin, no Ursprung, no archē; instead, as good Foucauldians reading our Nietzsche, we have to talk about ‘provenance’ (Herkunft) and ‘point of emergence’ (Entstehung). And equally there is no ‘ecstasy’ or ekstasis, for there is nothing outside the self, indeed there is nothing outside the text (il n’y a pas de hors-texte); indeed, there isn’t even a text, there is only a structure, a tissu, a web, a network. (And there certainly isn’t a canon; although, in a way, there is, for the new canonicity resides precisely in the denial of canonicity, and in the destruction, ridicule, or avoidance of the canon.)
