Davies' work reveals a progressive attempt to define human identity in the fullest possible sense. In the development of his work from Shakespeare's Boy Actors to World of Wonders, he can be seen to examine the possibilities of role-playing, the second self, the autonomous personality of the artist, the Jungian self, the romance hero, and the Magian soul, and to assess each as a possible mythologem of the completed human identity. His exploration of these possibilities is rooted in his deep and long-lasting affinity with Jung, and, for the most part, is carried out within a frame of reference firmly based on Jung's ideas. Nevertheless, Davies eventually moves beyond his affinity with Jung to a more impartial assessment of Jungianism as simply one way of looking at the universe, one myth among a number of others, and finally he is able to present the Jungian self as only one among several concepts of complete human identity.
Each step of his exploration of human identity involves incursions into what Jung calls 'the smaller infinity' …, for a definition of human identity can be formulated only in terms of the inner reality of human beings. It is this inner reality which Davies describes as the 'enchanted landscape.' His inner world is not, however, 'the cosy nursery retreat of Winnie-the-Pooh. It is a tough world, and it only seems irrational or unreal to those who have not grasped some hints of its remorseless, irreversible, and often cruel logic. It is a world in which God is not mocked, and in which a man reaps—only too obviously—what he has sown.' It is clear that his concept of the 'enchanted landscape' is broad enough to include not only Jungianism but also the romance myth of the hero and the concept of the Magian soul. It is also easy to see in it a specific analogue of Jung's view of the inner reality, the 'indefinitely large hinterland of unconscious psyche.'… Consequently, Jungianism provides an interpretative approach to his enchanted landscape and to Davies' experience of it.
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