Dori’s presentation is titled, “Roger’s Labors: The Resonance of Eros and Psyche in Outlander”
In his seminal work Amor and Psyche, Erich Neumann suggests that Psyche’s story offers a key to understanding the process of coming to know and fall in love with one’s own soul. This depth psychological approach shows how stories activate divine energies in the world around us, making the mythic gods real as they walk in our imaginations and in our interactions with others. We see the resonances of these myths in the stories we continue to tell and retell. My presentation will look the relationship between the characters Brianna Randall Fraser and Roger Mackenzie Wakefield in season four of the Outlander television series. I will explore the presence of motifs connected to Eros and Psyche as I discuss how the activation of these archetypal energies helps to illuminate ways we might think about deepening our relationships with others and with ourselves.
About Dori:
Dori Koehler, Ph.D. is a cultural mythologist and scholar of American popular culture. She is a professor of Humanities and Popular Culture at Southern New Hampshire University. Her book The Mouse and the Myth: Sacred Art and Secular Ritual is available on Amazon. Her latest article on Walt Disney as a manifestation of the trickster archetype will be published in a forthcoming collection of essays through John Libbey Publishing. She lives in Santa Barbara with her husband and their cocker spaniel, Sorcha.
To connect with Dori, visit her blog, Of Myth and (Hu)Men: Myth and Ritual of our Time.