Creation's Heartbeat : Following the Reindeer Spirit

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Summary: New Age spirituality from a philosopher analyst.
Review: Linda Leonard shares her shaky brand of New Age shaman spirituality legitimized by her certification as a Jungian analyst yet ironically inspired by objectifying a dream image and seeking it in the outer world. Jungian analysts do not necessarily have psychiatric training or a continually updated background in psychology/psychiatry, and Linda Leonard was at her best writing about what she knows -- twelve step programs, creative achievement and the madness of alcoholism in Witness to the Fire, her most valuable and intelligent contribution as a recovering alcoholic who nearly lost her profession and life to her disease. Creation's Heartbeat, in comparison, if you're familiar with her other books, seems the "puella-madwoman" in romantic flight with a "soulmate," a shaky trip with the feel of a substitute for the romantic escape no longer provided by alcohol. Tragically and embarrassingly, though this tale often reads like a woman in her twenties wrote it, you will find a woman in her sixties questioning her separate existence at the relatively peaceful death of her aged mother. A fashionable contribution to the popular "Jungian," "shamanic" literature that reached its peak in the eighties, with an interesting but romantic (objectified dream image) portrayal of the reindeer and nomadic laplands.