Dr. Ruth Meyer was one of the first female undergraduates to be admitted to Corpus Christi College, Oxford in 1979. She studied and taught history in England and Spain for 10 years before discovering Carl Jung. She is a pioneer in Jungian psychohistory. Her book, Clio’s Circle: Entering the Imaginal World of Historians is published by Spring Journal. It examines the role of dreams and visions of historians as a missing link in the process of writing history. She has been teaching history for a total of 22 years and she currently teaches world history at a college preparatory school in San Jose, California. She continues to present her research on dreams and history at workshops and conferences.
How do historians make an imaginative leap into the past? How do they recreate historical events as if they can reach out and touch, smell, hear, see, and even taste them? According to depth psychologist and historian Dr. Ruth Meyer, dreams, visions, and altered states form an unacknowledged and misunderstood part of the historian's creative process. Drawing on the autobiographical writings of historians such as Arnold Toynbee and Simon Schama, Clio's Circle weaves together the insights of depth psychology with life-changing moments of historical inspiration. We enter the circle of Clio, muse of history, where time takes on a different meaning and the spark of historical creativity ignites.
"When historians are supposed to be 'objective,' getting their 'facts straight,' they rarely risk sharing the degree of their imaginal immersion in the history that has called them. Depth psychologist, history educator, and psychohistorian, Ruth Meyer, shares her fascinating sleuthing in the autobiographical confessions of historians for evidence of the dreams, visions, and empathic imaginative experiences that have deepened their historical grasp. This groundbreaking work shows us that being an historian is in part an imaginal activity, with the radical implication that teaching history should engage the empathic imagination of students. Only then can they cross the border from their own experiences to those of other peoples and times. If only Ruth Meyer had been my history teacher! What imaginal forays would have been possible!" — Mary Watkins, Ph.D., co-author of Towards Psychologies of Liberation and author of Waking Dreams and Invisible Guests: The Development of Imaginal Dialogues
"With gentle scholarship and persuasive passion, Ruth Meyer rescues the arts of the imagination at the heart of history. Clio's Circle discovers the depth psychological creativity by which historians past and present enter the underworld both tragic and glorious. This book is an important addition to understanding the meaning of history and to nourishing its future." — Susan Rowland, Reader in English and Jungian Studies, University of Greenwich, UK
"Full of fascinating stories. Meyer's quickening of history will delight lovers of archives and place alike. There are many literary friends in here – historians, poets, artists, psychoanalysts – who seem to drink, like proverbial History and Memory, from each others lips. Entering the imagination of history with her is a true thinking person's pleasure." — Nor Hall, author of The Moon and the Virgin and Those Women
