Proles sine matre creata: The Promethean Urge in the History of the Human Body in the West
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3989/asclepio.2013.01Keywords:
idea of the body, archetypal psychology, Golem, Homunculus, automatonAbstract
Since the beginning of modernity there has been an observable tendency in Western thought to consider the human body as susceptible of technical manipulation, to the extreme of conceiving the possibility of manufacturing it. The figures of the homunculus and the automaton, the heirs of the Golem, represent the clearest embodiment of this aspiration. This paper explores the psychology underlying this plan, based on the psychological theory of C.G. Jung, and developed more recently by J. Hillman, on the hypothesis that the plan involves the denial of the feminine and, therefore, of the more truly psychological aspects of humanity, in the name of a unilaterally rationalistic and materialistic worldview. From the viewpoint of the authors mentioned, the mythicalpsychological reference capable of providing the fundamental key to this project would be Prometheus.
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