The great American novel Moby-Dick describes symbolically Herman Melville’s stormy spiritual voyage. It is also a profound expression of Western civilization in transition. Edward Edinger approaches Moby-Dick as a psychological document, a symbolic record of an intense inner experience which, like a dream, needs interpretation and elaboration of its images for their meaning to emerge fully. Central to Edinger’s penetrating commentary is the concept of nekyia, signifying a descent to the underworld — that is, an encounter with the unconscious. Thus, the subtitle of this work underscores the correspondence between the deep internal struggle from which Melville’s masterpiece emerged and the hidden complexities within us all. —Midwest Book Review