Ira Progoff’s (1959) Depth Psychology and Modern Man, behind his theory of “dynatypes,” is the presence of the archetypal image of the American Bard, for which Walt Whitman serves as an exemplar. Progoff grasped that Whitman had “reached a stage in his inner development that enabled him to recognize, and spiritually participate in, the holistic process of the cosmos” (Progoff 1959, p. 91). Whitman’s participation in the Divinity within the Cosmos, and his celebration of his own life, as a speaker of Divinity out of his own essential Nature spoke directly to Progoff and made a profound impact on him. Progoff’s theory of dynatypes may be traced to a study by Jan Christian Smutts, Walt Whitman: A Study in the Evolution of Personality (Smutts 1973), and Carl Jung.
Progoff had been inspired to explore the process of organic evolution in human nature in depth as a social psychologist and psychotherapist after his meeting with C. G. Jung, in Zurich in 1951, when he recognized that the process...
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Herrmann, S.B. (2014). Progoff, Ira. In: Leeming, D.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6086-2_9010
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