Life's betrayals both define and condemn us to re-create ourselves. Jungian analyst Aldo Carotenuto shows us the positive and fundamental role of betrayal in our growth throughout life. Betrayal visits us from the moment of birth and remains a life theme through childhood, marriage, aging, and death. It is also the foundation of the Jewish and Christian religions. Carotenuto applies the term "to betray" to many issues brought to psychotherapy. In psychoanalysis, many old certainties are revealed and betrayed. It is also a time when the expectations of others need to be betrayed. By heightening our consciousness of betrayal and being betrayed, this book moves us toward our true nature and wholeness.

"Every seduction is a promise, a half-opened door into the unfamiliar, momentarily glimpsed, world of splendor -an expectation not only attenuated by desire and waiting, but intensified." Seduction includes a secret invitation to embrace transformation, an openness to change despite risks and suffering. The many facets of seduction are illuminated through a lively discussion of Satan, figures from Greek mythology, star-crossed lovers such as Paolo and Francesca, and the master of seduction, Don Juan. In the analytical relationship, the patient must maintain equilibrium between fear and attraction; the analyst must realize that the analytical process animates fantasies of seduction. In a fable told by a patient, an analyst, and a narrator, the secret meaning of an encounter are revealed. This book fosters a clear understanding of the affective roots of seduction that can lead to transformation and the discovery of a new identity.

The Call of the Daimon: Love and Truth in the Writings of Franz Kafka moves easily between Kafka's life, characters and events in the novels, contemporary poetry, and Aldo Carotenuto's interpretations of critical Jungian perspectives. The primary human event that interests Carotenuto is the call of the daimon: the desire for truth and love that destroys all misconceptions and self-delusions, that demands a constant creative response to life's difficulties, and that ultimately allows the seeker no rest. This is Carotenuto's vision of the driven Kafka, and he follows this theme as it moves from Kafka's life into the created lives of his characters. Carotenuto analyzes the characters as aspects of Kafka and the novels as Kafka's attempt to be true to the call, which is the essence of true art, and ultimately of true healing. -- Midwest Book Review

"Margritte is a poet of dreams. His painting present to the eye of the observer an enigma having the same coded density as the oneric world. In a frenetic society that has given up dreams and fantasy, that is characterized by people rushing vertiginously ahead, like guinea pigs continually bombarded with stimuli rushing madly around their cage, the analyst's task is to recover the imaginary, the poetry of the soul, of the psyche. In this sense, the therapist must necessarily be portrayed as a wayfarer who lives life as if it were a never ending voyage. Every stop is marked by an encounter, at every stop a face awaits. And in that lost and bewildered stranger who asks to be shows the way, one begins traveling down a new stretch of the road. It is in the patient that the analyst finds the eagerly awaited fellow traveler."