Celtic Queen Maeve and Addiction: An Archetypal Perspective

by Sylvia Brinton Perera

Drawing on twenty-six years of experience as a Jungian analyst, the author shows how the stories and images of ancient mythology can illuminate the depths of the psyche. In particular she shows how those in the grip of addiction confront the great Irish goddess Maeve, whose name means "the inebriating one" and whose drink was the sacred mead. Maeve represents the profoundly human and archetypal need for experiences of ecstasy and sovereignty. Written with passion and clarity, the author gives us Queen Maeve in full, and invites us to comprehend the wildness of the Celtic imagination. She brings with her the sensitivity of a psychoanalyst who has companioned many souls suffering the dislocations and addictions of modern life. For those who have had to battle with their own addictions or with those of their loved ones or clients, this book offers the promise of understanding how that battle is suffered, fought, and won.

Genres: Psychology, Spirituality

490 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2001

About the author

Sylvia Brinton Perera, M.A., is a Jungian analyst who lives, practices, teaches, and writes in New York and Vermont and lectures worldwide. Originally trained as an art historian, she earned her M.A. in psychology and graduated from the Jung Institute of New York. Her publications include Descent to the Goddess; The Scapegoat Complex; Dreams, A Portal to the Source (with E. Christopher Whitmont); Celtic Queen Maeve and Addiction and The Irish Bull God: Image of the Multiform and Integral Masculine.

Reviews

[John Pants · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was about a million epiphanies for me.

Sylvia writes with compassion and comes from a real place of a desire to help people. You can feel it as you read and it's not the same experience as reading some of the more self indulgent writers who think really highly of themselves and take liberties tooting their own horns. She seems equally sacrificially committed to seeking out her own mind-blowings as I feel - and because of this, I find her work very accessible. Her good intentions and insights have real ammunition in relevance and novelty, and because of this, her points really get across to the reader.

Total hidden gem. Has affected me in deep ways.

I was addicted to painkillers for 4 years and this book really helped me understand addiction in a way that other books could not, and I've read a few. I have now been clean for a year and half so far and have no fear of relapse whatsoever.

Wrote this review because I can't believe a book of this quality has received so little attention!

[Raven · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's difficult to assign a number value to 500 pages of mythical brain spaghetti. I'm not terribly familiar with Jungian analysis, so I was kind of picking up the relevant parts of what it means to be a therapist in that context as I went. I am pretty familiar with Maeve and the various legends surrounding her, and I appreciated the many places where the author prods my understanding of the mythology by looking at it from an unexpected angle. So, I came for the Celts and stayed for the addiction therapy advice. If only I remembered my dreams, I'd be interested to see whether the book's contents percolated through, heh. But I learned a good bit about the Jungian engagement with the founder of the 12 step program, and how the program approaches addiction from a religious perspective, and that was valuable.

[Cosmic.Morning a · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very dense and not a book to take lightly. But incredibly interesting and at times, rather beautiful. There are some interesting parallels with Queen Maeve and Lilith from Apocrypha bible texts that were lost and found. Perhaps hinting at archetypal patterns ingrained in ancient man. Very fascinating.

[Sen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has to be one of the most underrated books of all time.
Reading this book felt like discovering the philosopher's stone.

Sylvia weaves together disciplines like poetry, sociology, psychology, history, mythology, into a beautifully mystical carpet of meaning which provides an answer to the (western) fixation on being constantly ok. There seems to be a whole depth to life we are missing by out of by not allowing ourselves the chance to be purposefully not ok, by not challenging ourselves, to suffer ourselves.

But mixing so many different elements into this magical concoction will also be very daunting for people who are not very well versed into such things already. Sylvia doesn't spend much time explaining technical terms, there's a kind of underlying expectation the reader is advanced enough to understand them or has a willingness to find out by themselves on the journey of consuming this book.
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