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SANDRA EDELMAN
Sandra Edelman holds a graduate degree in psychology and literature and has published on ethnography, literary criticism, fiction, and poetry. She is the former editor of the Sunstone Press and the Sunstone Review.
two views of an ancient Gorgon head
TURNING THE GORGON
A Meditation on Shame
Second, revised edition
Paperback original, 184 pages, $22
ISBN: 978-0-88214-159-6
Kindle/Apple Books edition, $9.99
ISBN: 978-0-88214-160-2
Turning the Gorgon is a superb piece of writing, one which will please psychologists, and curious readers alike. It makes an important, if in some quarters controversial, contribution to our understanding of shame.
   Shame, although a long neglected psychological issue, is just beginning to receive the wider clinical attention it deserves (primarily from the affect theorists). Edelman’s thoughts on it, an outgrowth of her Jungian analytical work, helps to clarify the depth of its overlooked and misinterpreted origin.
   To do this Edelman uses the fields of psychology, philosophy, mythology, classical scholarship, and theology. The final chapter suggests ways of healing a crippling sense of shame using each of these discipline’s perspectives. Part of the book is a remembering of the classical goddess Athene and her relationship to the Gorgon, whose image is taken as an emblem of shame.