James Hollis

Why do so many go through so much disruption in their middle years? Why then? Why do we consider it to be a crisis? The Middle Passage presents us with an opportunity to reexamine our lives and to ask: "Who am I apart from my history and the roles I have played?" It is an occasion for redefining and reorienting the personality, a necessary rite of passage between the extended adolescence of the first adulthood and our inevitable appointment with old age and mortality. The Middle Passage addresses the following issues: How did we acquire our original sense of self? What are the changes that herald the Middle Passage? How does one revision the sense of self? What is the relationship between Jung's concept of individuation and our commitment to others? What attitudes and behavior support individuation and help us move from misery to meaning? This book shows how we may travel the Middle Passage consciously, thereby rendering our lives more meaningful and the second half of life immeasurably richer. --back cover

Is the purpose of life to achieve happiness? Who does not long to arrive some distant day at that sunlit meadow where we may abide in pure contentment? In reality we know life is not like that; our road is often dreary, the way unclear. Much of the time we are lost in the dismal states of guilt, grief, betrayal, doubt, depression, anger, terror and the like. Is this all we can hope for? Perhaps not, says this author. The Jungian perspective, by encompassing both the meadow and the bog, asserts that the goal of life is not happiness but meaning. And meaning, though it may not be all sunlight and blossoms, is real. Swamplands of the Soul explores the quicksands where we have all floundered. It lights a beacon by showing what they mean in terms of our individual journey and the engendering of soul. For it is precisely where we encounter the gravitas of life that we also uncover its purpose, its dignity and its deepest meaning.