is the Greek name for Ceres, goddess of agriculture. She had a daughter, Proserpine, who was taken away from her by Pluto, god of the lower regions.
The Curative Function of Symbols1 2 5 ery ceased as soon as the patient stopped her visits to a library. She did this several times.One day she came upon two of my books: Symbolic Realization, and The Diar>r of a Schizophrenic. Although her own case differed completely from the cases cited in these books, Demeter saw a likeness in the role played by a symbol in the healing process. She therefore thought that the author would probably understand something about the amazing agent which healed her, and that she would understand the probably symbolic value of the library. And so she wrote and asked me to study her case and try to cure her.In this letter she also revealed the events which she considered the direct cause of her sickness:I fell sick at the age of forty, consequent to the abduction of my daughter, an event that was fully approved by my country's Court of Justice which is entirely under the influence of the Church.When I am sick, I am unable to do anything, any work whatever, to make any appointment and least of all to speak to people. I avoid everybody. I lose all contact with both people and things. Inside and mentally I know that I live, but I feel that I do not live, that I am like dead, similar to the feeling just before losing consciousness when being anesthetized. I suffer the entire time from not feeling alive. I must stay in bed tortured by this impotency but not really tired. And I am hostile.You will say that this state is an affliction, but I tell you it is a torture! In these periods I see and hear as usual and I don't feel my body changed. It's my heart and my memory that are affected. Dead. I began to feel I was dying inside when I had just recovered from pneumonia. But I believe I did not realize this feeling of being dead, or half alive, until it was over, thanks to the library. The public library is the only thing which for a period of time has cured me. I was then as I had been before the abduction of my daughter.This experience has been repeated eight times in a period of nine years. Now I am absolutely sure it is only the library which cures me. Before the war, I consulted a number of doctors who treated me-psychiatrists included-but nothing succeeded in improving my condition in the least. No one ever showed the slightest interest in the library and yet, I repeat, this was the one and only thing that helped.At present I feel sick again, having stopped spending my days in the library; but your book has given me hope. I feel sure, in all my affective being, that you who have found "symbolic realization" will also find the meaning of the library. I resemble your patient Reni-e in one respect: Her symbol has struck me. I also i t 6
