Silberstein, J. (2006).

An angel and her feather: How fact and fiction heal and explore the archetype of home

The idea for this dissertation arose out of an image I beheld as a 6 ½ year old South African child who immigrated to America. The image was of two angels in the snow, lying flat and somber, praying for a savior to help them find their way back home. The snow angels became a metaphor in this dissertation for the profound feelings of loss one experiences when one abandons one's childhood home and enters a foreign land devoid of connection and soul. The angels also serve in this study as an ongoing archetype for the relinquishment of the divine, spiritual realm and the interminable surrendering to the mundane, earthly world. The study addresses the questions: How can poetic images move and sustain us on a depth psychological level, ultimately leading us back home? And, how does one take such poetic visions and link them with academic research? To approach these questions, I chose the artistic method in the form of a memoir, Angels in the Snow , and novel, The Gossamer Thread, illustrating how both fact and fiction writing can assist in a deep sense of healing and in an exploration of the archetype of home. Both pieces ponder the depth psychological paradox between the conscious and unconscious, between the mundane realm and the imaginal realm, between the human and changeable and the immortal and permanent, and between life and art. Connecting scholastic research with a poetic sensibility required the tools or set of attitudinal skills defined by phenomenological hermeneutics and heuristic inquiry. By emphasizing the philosophy of both of these qualitative methodologies, I was able to link the snow angels within an academic research framework, honoring the lived experience while leaving room for the soul's deepest language, the primordial image.