ABSTRACT
The first chapter has a four-part structure focusing on the meta-themes of this book: the application of Jungian theory to literary analyses, popular culture and adolescence; the educational potential of King's stories; and a theoretical account of the transcendent writer. The first part of this chapter sets out in detail the possibility of applying Jungian concepts to literary analyses. Rowland (2002; 2005), for example, emphasises ‘personal myth’ in Jung's own theorising, which accounts for Jung's ambition to investigate his personal experience in shaping his own theories. This book uses the method of ‘personal myth’ as a tool for investigating how the stories of King's writer-protagonists help adolescents to reflect on their personal identities. The second part describes how the concept of the ‘perpetual adolescent’ and transcendent writer each offer a different view on popular culture. While the ‘perpetual adolescent’ emphasises stagnation and destructivity in popular culture, the transcendent writer shows how popular culture can be used to study psychological development in adolescence. The third part focuses on the application of the theory of the transcendent writer for creating a teacher's handbook on King's work, arguing that such a handbook would give adolescents concrete pointers on how to reflect on their own psychological development. The fourth and last part outlines the concept of the transcendent writer focusing on the key components of my theory, the puer aeternus and individuation, as well as the auxiliary tools, Dawson's ‘effective protagonist’ and Hillman's re-visioning of the Jungian concept anima.
