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PREFACE
I experience a recurring dream in which I am moving upwards, aware of a
vast open landscape; a copse of trees stands to the right and stretching before me a
grassy plain. I n the distance a depression in the landscape marks the course of an
ancient narrow river and beyond that a mountain range. The place is lush and green
and primordial; it is still and quiet yet I sense intensity. I n a succeeding episode of
that dream sequence I have crossed over the crude wooden bridge that spans the
river and leads to the foot of the mountains and in the most recent episode, I have
begun my climb up the craggy but richly forested face of that mountainside.
Some tell me that my dream is Jungian and suggests the individuation
process or perhaps represents, metaphorically, an ascension further up my own
Mount Kaf, the movement of my life to its inevitable ending, to the summit to
confront whatever it is that is there. I ponder over the connection and significance it
may have to me now and in the many past stages of my life, from boyhood on, since
when I experience that dream, I am aware also that it is not just for the immediate
past and present but encompasses all stages of my life. I muse over where or what
this place might be and why the idyllic setting?
The possibilities arising from these questions are, essentially, what have
brought me to this thesis; the need to examine the way that the story or narrative of
each individual soul or psyche is bounded, distinguished and formed, often with
mythic dimensions, by place or the places, real or imagined, that it occupies. How
does the soul or psyche generate narratives or stories that connect it with place and
what do they tell us about our deepest selves? Do place and soul have a symbiotic
relationship and might not that relationship then manufacture something narrative in
form so that it may be known? Thus, I am interested in examining the way that
story emerges from place. Some may wish to argue that story or narrative emerges
or is created out of individual experiences, an experience that will be given different