Goliath

David with the Head of Goliath. It portrays the biblical David as a youth, full-length, facing the spectator, holding the decapitated head of the giant Goliath by the hair. The peculiar characteristic of this canvas is that although the hero is represented as the stronger of the two, evidently victorious over the giant, at the same time he is paradoxically fragile and vulnerable

Papadopoulos reads the Guido Reni painting of David and Goliath — known to Jung from childhood — as a symbolic template for the Jung-Freud relationship, in which the younger, vulnerable victor nonetheless overcomes the towering elder.

Papadopoulos, Renos K., The Handbook of Jungian Psychology: Theory, Practice and Applications, 2006thesis

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I particularly remember an Italian painting of David and Goliath. It was a mirror copy from the workshop of Guido Reni; the original hangs in the Louvre. How it came into our family I do not know.

Jung identifies the David-and-Goliath painting from Guido Reni's workshop as one of his earliest and most vivid aesthetic memories, anchoring the image in his personal psychology.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1963thesis

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Little wonder that when we were very small we all feared giants and thrilled to stories about those who could kill them, like David or Jack, or outwit them, like Ulysses. The giant, with its grown-up stupidity, threatens a child's imagination

Hillman uses the David-and-Goliath archetype to illustrate the soul's instinctive opposition between imaginative cunning and the literalist, reductive giant-mind that destroys metaphorical perception.

Hillman, James, The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling, 1996thesis

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He is a David confronting some Goliath. And he speaks as though he had no choice but to fight the battle to a finish.

Havelock deploys the David-Goliath figure to characterize Plato's intellectual courage in opposing the totalizing authority of the poetic tradition, framing the philosopher as underdog combatant against an overwhelmingly powerful cultural force.

Eric A. Havelock, Preface to Plato, 1963supporting

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before using his own sword against him, you may choose first to use your sling against him. Then take a stone from your shepherd's bag and sling it (cf. 1 Sam. 17) by asking these questions

The Philokalia passage invokes the David-and-Goliath combat as an ascetic metaphor for the intellect's sequential strategies — sling before sword — in defeating demonic temptation.

Palmer, G. E. H. and Sherrard, Philip and Ware, Kallistos (trs.), The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995supporting

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Goliath, 20

Neumann's index entry places Goliath within his ethical typology at page 20, indicating the figure serves as a reference point — likely for the archetype of overwhelming collective force overcome by the individuating hero — though without extended argument in this passage.

Neumann, Erich, Depth Psychology and a New Ethic, 1949aside

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whereas the Philistines would rejoice at his defeat, they would revenge a victory, so best they not be told. For victory it was, over the Philistines.

Berry uses Freud's allusion to the Philistines — the people of Goliath — as an archetypal mode of perception synonymous with reductive literalism hostile to psychological and spiritual insight.

Berry, Patricia, Echo's Subtle Body: Contributions to an Archetypal Psychology, 1982aside

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much that is legendary still remains, as for example the story of David and Goliath; but much — and the most essential — consists in things which the narrators knew from their own experience or from firsthand testimony.

Auerbach cites the David-and-Goliath narrative as the paradigm case of legendary residue within the predominantly historical texture of the Books of Samuel, illustrating the structural difference between legend and historical reportage.

Auerbach, Erich, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, 1953aside

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