ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses Freud, whose own descent into the unconscious uncovered a number of figures who were ostensibly dead but who kept coming back. The journey to the primitive psyche will have to be undertaken with one thought in mind that the purpose of the journey is to prevent the death of the soul. The point of Freud's descent into the hell of the unconscious, however, is to recover pity for a self that had long been mortified and may have been moribund. In that descent he encounters the infantile self of murderous rivalry and of unrealistic desires that seeks to keep old loves alive forever. The longing to recover a more primitive self underlies the desire to undertake many a spiritual journey. To offer a pathway to the primitive aspects of the psyche remains the task of religious guidance, but the guides can no longer be early Christian ascetics, early medieval visionaries, Dante or more modern romantics.
