The Rilke Lectures
By Daniel Joseph Polikoff
Chiron Publications, 2026
NEW RELEASE APRIL 10, 2026
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Originally prepared for a Pacifica Graduate Institute course on The Poetic Basis of Mind, these eight lectures stand on their own as a unique and cohesive treatment of many core concerns of the soul. As a unified whole, the lecture-essays focus upon dynamics internal to what the author (only now, years after their original composition) has come to call “the Sophianic Cross.” That aegis includes not only psychology and art, but myth, religion, and philosophy as well, all pictured in relation to one another in the form of the cross-like configuration visible on this book’s cover.
Long before the emergence of psychology, the poets were the seafarers through the vasty deeps of the soul. Among the most sensitive, nuanced, and revelatory is Rainer Maria Rilke. Daniel Polikoff’s The Rilke Lectures is a marvelous exploration of this bond between the aesthetic and the psychological. His illuminations of Rilke’s oeuvre alone are worth reading, but the linkage forged with depth psychology broadens the field and is a true gift.
—JAMES HOLLIS, co-author (with Enrique Celaya) of Tending the Fire: Creativity, Purpose, and the Unfolding Self
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This book is a masterful exploration that immerses us in the enigmatic world of Rilke’s vision. Polikoff’s insightful lectures draw us back to the profound root of our discipline—the poetic basis of mind—and enhance our understanding of the rich seam that binds together depth psychological thought and poetic imagination.
—SAFRON ROSSI, Ph.D., author of The Kore Archetype: A Mythology & Psychology