This book is a precious gem. Multifaceted, complex, brilliant and illuminating, The Other Within is as close to the embodied act of "diving deep and surfacing" as you can get in a text. Deardorff weaves a breathtakingly beautiful series of chapters that teases the mind rapt in concentration towards the uneasy challenge of how the betrayed, deformed Other - mad dog-headed poet, outcast, misfit, trickster and vagabond - might live in the massman's civilized world that has dismissed the gorgeous mess of the liminal badlands. Anti-civilizational psychology at the mythopoeic level.

Drawing from the work of mythologians, poets, psychologists and scholars, Deardorff reveals a grasp of archetypal material of such depth that it is often quite difficult to hold on to. Although I hold a deep fascination with Jungian spirituality, archetypal psychology and the study of myth, I am not supremely well-versed on the subject. In other words, I am not a Jungian or Joseph Campbell scholar, and my exposure to, say, the work of Victor Turner has been limited. Therefore, this book is certainly a challenge. It deserves a close and intimate engagement with the text. I found that I needed to read much of the book out loud in order to slow down my absorption of the material so I could effectively process it. But what a rich collection of thought-provoking imagery and material! It is well worth the effort.

It is encouraging to know that there are people doing this work out in the world. I recommend this book to anyone who would plumb the depths of meaning in a world enslaved to order. It is far and away one of the most profound books I have read of late.