About a month ago, I was standing in the shower, waking myself up for another day of editing from home, when I was struck by the question When are you ever going to write another book review? Yes, it was coming from within, but I could almost hear it. I suddenly felt uneasy. Here were my self-criticism and perfectionism masquerading as commitment and healthy ambition.
A lot of shoulds swirled around the question. You never should’ve stopped writing book reviews! and You should pick something out to review right away! Get on it before you become irrelevant! and The longer the gap, the less seriously anyone will take you!
These inner critics (it felt like many, not just one!) have no regard for the other healthful and fulfilling things I’ve been doing since my last review, much less the many heavy things going on in the world today. They’re dogmatic. They’re the parts of me that think doing things just to do them is better than pausing or resting or waiting for something meaningful and congruent with my interests and abilities to come along. They’re the parts that demand to be heard and don’t value silence. The parts that really want to be relevant.
As I rinsed my hair, I imagined rinsing away those anxieties and staying true to the parts of myself that decided to invest my time in other things this year (organizing to oppose a big, environmentally unfriendly development, resting, and assisting a therapy group among them). I could see clearly that writing book reviews just to write them isn’t what anyone needs me to do right now. I could even imagine saying goodbye to the series of reviews.
Then, just a few days later, something came to me. Or, more specifically, my inbox. It was an invitation from Jean Raffa, a writer I met at the Jung in the Heartland Conference around the same time last year, to read and review her soon-to-be-released book, The Soul’s Twins: Emancipate Your Feminine and Masculine Archetypes. I laughed. How is this possible? She remembered from one of our lunch chats that, like her, I’m an INFJ. I immediately had flashbacks of how good it felt to be in her presence and how she’d read, powerfully, a Joy Harjo poem that brought me to tears. Jean is an elegant, well-spoken woman who, in my brief encounters with her, radiated warmth and an abundance of time: for the person she was with and for her own interests. Yes, I wanted to read and review her book.
My first strong response to the book came when I got to Chapter Two: “The Partnership Profile.” Yikes. I was turned off by what struck me as a self-help or magazine-style “quiz” (despite my attraction to Myers-Briggs typology). If this resonates with you, or if, like me, you tend to push back against things that look like assignments and recognize a part of yourself that’s deeply suspicious of self-help books, know that The Soul’s Twins and The Partnership Profile surprised me in many ways. I kept my Partnership Profile results at hand as I read and found myself reaching for them frequently as I was introduced to Mother, Father, Queen, Warrior, Mediatrix, Sage, Beloved, and Lover, the archetypes (or twins) Jean explores in the book. They personalized the reading experience such that it felt like I was learning more about myself than an expert’s philosophy or ideology. This was a welcome divergence from many other books I’ve read for review.
The Soul’s Twins is incredibly well organized. The editor in me loved that it unfolded logically (and with a twist at the end). Each archetype-specific chapter includes
- A brief introduction of the archetype
- A series of narratives that explicate the archetype
- A section on the shadow side of the archetype
- A list of historical, mythical, and religious figures from around the world and across traditions who’ve manifested the archetype (this will be of particular interest for readers who want to go deeper/do more research)
- A summary that relates the archetype back to the reader’s own life experience
This structure invited me to focus and learn without feeling overwhelmed. Jean’s writing is rich but digestible. At no point did I feel excluded because of a lack of knowledge about a given myth, figure, or concept. I was elated to be challenged to think about my masculine and feminine sides in what can be described as a peaceful, private setting. The language in The Soul’s Twins felt very inclusive.
The images Jean chose to include enliven the book’s concepts. An interlude beckons you into the realm of active imagination. Reading this book felt like healthy activity or a deep stretch. It was soothing and expanded my awareness. Yes, it felt Jungian. No, it was not tedious or cerebral.
In Chapter Two, Jean suggests that like “a regular practice such as meditation, dreamwork, bodywork, creative work, or psychoanalysis,” The Soul’s Twins will help you “understand yourself better and … see your options and their consequences clearly.” I sense that those who’ve already established one of these practices will get the most from this book. It isn’t a beginner’s guide. It may leave you with a few pressing questions and invite powerful dreams. It also offers readers what I found to be heart-centered perspectives on addiction, depression, and even suicidal ideation.
I think The Soul’s Twins is a wonderful resource on shadows in particular, as it approaches them in a way I haven’t encountered before: explicating a light and dark side of each included archetype.
I was left with a question on this front: When it comes to the shadow twins, does Jean think it’s the shadow side of a person’s most dominant twin(s) or the shadow side of their least dominant twin(s) that’s most likely to adversely affect their life? For example, per the Partnership Profile, my most dominant twin is Mediatrix and my least dominant twin is Sage. Is the Shadow Mediatrix or the Shadow Sage more likely to be affecting me “behind the curtain”?
I emailed Jean about this on Saturday and received a gracious reply that I share part of here. “There’s no one easy answer,” she told me. “It’s a combination of archetype, personality type, social conditioning, early life experience, and level of self-awareness. Everyone has to examine their own life to find where their shadows lie.”
She went on to say, “The only way to know is to do enough inner work on your own to see your bright and shadow sides and develop the consciousness to maintain a kind of equilibrium in your inner and outer life. It’s a difficult task, but infinitely rewarding.” The Soul’s Twins is a great “place” to continue the work.
Since reading Jean’s reply, the idea of bright sides has stuck in my mind. It’s something I hope to see more, and experience more gratitude for, even as I deepen my awareness of the shadows that had me worrying about when this book review would go live.
Editor’s Bookshelf is a regular review of soon-to-be-released books that, in the spirit of Iphelia, asks important questions about how the written word—and in some cases, imagery—are used to help readers reconnect with their feelings, themselves, each other, and the world around them.
Iphelia’s editor, Linsey Stevens, answers these questions—chiming in on who will be most captivated by each book’s contents and how it invites readers to return to a heart-centered way of being.
The Soul’s Twins by Jean Benedict Raffa will be available on November 17, 2020, from Schiffer Publishing. For more on Jean, visit her About page here. For more on Iphelia: Awakening the Gift of Feeling, visit our book page.
