TRAGIC BEAUTY: THE DARK SIDE OF VENUS APHRODITE AND THE LOSS AND REGENERATION OF SOUL. By Arlene Diane Landau. 118 pp. New Orleans, LA: Spring Journal Books, 2011. US$22.95

Excerpt

Author Arlene Diane Landau weaves colorful threads selected from her own life and an assortment of others from the stories of her clients. The threads she chooses to weave into this particular cloth offer a diversity of hue, intensity, and texture. Some are bright, strong, and resilient; others fragile, frayed, and worn-looking. To expand the possibilities, she weaves in a few that may appear slightly twisted or even warped. Then, intertwined among them are the grand archetypal strands: Venus and Aphrodite. These classical strands accentuate the design of Landau’s writing, highlighting the connection of archetypes from ancient to contemporary life. They in turn enliven her weaving into a rich tapestry that will benefit the field of depth-psychology as a valuable resource for practicing psychotherapists as well as scholars of mythology and those who simply are curious to better understand the goddesses in their own lives. …