Soul and Culture

Over the centuries the Western mind has come to an uncritical certainty that reality has two dimensions—one "out there" and another "here inside." Object and subject face each other, separate themselves from each other, assert themselves as completely different from their radically different Other.

In Soul and Culture Roberto Gambini leads us to see that we are now entering an age in which it is no longer possible to believe this time-honored enactment. What has been perceived as duality for ages is being revealed as one with two sides. Through haunting and persuasive examples Gambini reveals the connection between the inside and the outside, the bond between soul and culture.

From the front pages of newspapers, unsuspected archetypes leap out of the images. The author walks us through neighborhoods of São Paulo, Brazil, attempting to understand culture by what is happening to the trees that line the streets of his city. Is their desecration a marker of what is happening to the human soul? Through the dilapidated passages of an old, abandoned flour mill turned art exhibit, he shows how medieval alchemy operates to regenerate what has decayed both inside the human psyche and outside in the city. Closing with a look at the vivid drawings of school children, he takes us to the fantastic world of a child's dreamlife and suggests the powerful potential of what happens when education and analytical psychology collaborate.

In simple, eloquent terms, Gambini illustrates that history can no longer be separate from the psyche—they reflect each other, two forms of the same substance. He challenges us to pursue transformation through reconciling the outer and inner realms and thinking critically about what we call “reality.”