The Seba library treats Gnome in 6 passages, across 6 authors (including von Franz, Marie-Louise, Bernard Williams, Sullivan, Shirley Darcus).
dwarfs, in contrast to giants, are personifications not of affects but of creative impulses. Thus the apparitions in the imagination had already taken on a constructive force
Von Franz argues that gnomes and dwarfs in active imagination represent creative impulses rather than destructive affects, and that the analysand’s ethical decision whether to admit the gnome constitutes a genuine moment of psychic engagement.
, Psychotherapy, 1993thesis
Oedipus plans to conquer this problem, as he says, by the same means that he used in overcoming the Sphinx, by gnome, rational intelligence
Williams identifies gnome as the faculty of rational intelligence through which Oedipus operates, situating it firmly within the Greek vocabulary of reasoned inquiry and strategic cognition.
, Shame and Necessity, 1993thesis
it is the finest and purest of all things, and has all judgement (gnome) concerning everything and is most powerful
Sullivan documents Anaxagoras’s attribution of gnome to nous, establishing the term as the supreme cognitive-discriminative power by which cosmic intelligence orders all things.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995thesis
According to the fairy lore of the Celts and Germans, a gnome or elf caught abroad by the sunrise is turned immediately into a stick or a stone.
Campbell invokes the gnome as a folkloric figure of liminal power whose numinous nature cannot survive the abrupt removal of protective darkness, illustrating the dangers of uninsulated contact between concentrated power-centers and the ordinary world.
, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, 2015supporting
Shatter, a gnome hurtful to potters
This index entry from the Hesiodic corpus preserves the archaic use of gnome as a malevolent spirit or personified force harmful to craftsmen, attesting the term’s pre-philosophical, daemonic register.
, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica, -700aside
judgment (gnome), cf. Thucydides 2.23.1, 2.59.3; 8.2.2 on anger motivating a decision
Konstan’s annotation places gnome within Thucydidean political discourse as the term for judgment or deliberative decision-making, confirming its stable classical sense as rational assessment in public affairs.
, The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature, 2006aside