The Other Within

The Genius of Deformity in Myth, Culture, & Psyche

by Daniel Deardorff introduction by Robert Bly

Hailed by scholars as a major breakthrough in the field of myth and psychology, this brilliant new study by Daniel Deardorff proposes that a certain poetic consciousness is generated by those who inhabit societal and psychic margins. This consciousness is identified as “Trickster-wisdom,” a subversive virtue that provides creative and innovative benefits to the very same society that invalidates and excludes its so called “misfits.”

Praise for Deardorff’s The Other Within
“This book has tremendous hope in it. It contributes to the hope that the superb work Joseph Campbell did on the written story and Gioia Timpanelli does on the spoken story can be continued. Deardorff carries mysteries into a new place. The place is nourishing, startling and full of intelligence.”
—Robert Bly

More Praise for Daniel Deardorff and The Other Within
“In this time of global awareness, there are many books on the theme of otherness—the otherness of race, class, religion, ideology and gender, as well as the otherness of ourselves, the “I” that walks beside me that is not “I”. But rare is the expression of otherness from the perspective of otherness. This is one of those rare books! It is a telling example of what Gaston Bachelard must have meant, writing in his book on Air and Dreams, when he said that deformation is the clue to imagination. It is conventional to think the opposite: namely, that the formation of some definite identity is the way to imagine meaningfully. But Daniel Deardorff reveals to the reader in this book that in our various identifications of meaning, we egos are typically one-sided, walling ourselves in upon ourselves. This work artfully reveals that the wall is one-sided, and then it leads us to the other side of the one-sided wall!”
—David L. Miller, Professor of Religion Emeritus, Syracuse University, Core Faculty Member, Pacifica Graduate Institute

“Daniel Deardorff’s The Other Within offers us a brilliant account of the ways in which the redeeming energies of the Sacred often find their access to us through our weaknesses, our limitations, even those parts of ourselves which we find most ugly and shameful. This is an authoritative voice and one which should be heard by everyone in the field of soulwork and healing.”
—Robert Moore, Professor of Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Spirituality, The Chicago Theological Seminary. Author of The Archetype of Initiation: Ritual, Sacred Space and Healing


“Because the important figure of the Trickster has eluded many in our modern culture, I urge you to read Daniel Deardorff on the subject. In this amazing study of the real and imagined ‘other,’ he has given a valuable roadmap to the profound regions of Story.”
—Gioia Timpanelli, author of Sometimes the Soul: Two Novellas of Sicily