In 2002 Dr. David Rosen, a psychiatrist and Jungian analyst on the faculty of Texas A&M's psychology department and its medical school wrote and published an exploration of the Taoist nature of America'sgreatest rock icon, Elvis Presley--naturally he entitled it The Tao of Elvis. At the time of the book's publication he wrote that "all interest in Elvis [is] symbolic expression of the fact that we need to heal our racially and economically divided society and world as well as reintegrate ourselves his epic rise and fall captures what is in all of us."

I picked the book up unknowingly in the summer of 2003 at a Half Price Books, bought it, read it and enjoyed it, only later realizing that its author still worked at the University I attended. I tracked him down recently and we had a conversation about the King.

Elvis remains a powerful cultural icon even though many people today have only a cursory knowledge of his body of recording work. How does the image survive even as much of music is forgotten?

As I mention in the book, Elvis is an archetypal image. He's recognized everywhere along with Jesus and Muhammad Ali. There are king and queen archetypes. In our country Elvis is the king (god) and Marilyn Monroe is the queen (goddess). We made Elvis into a king and he thought that was silly. We did the same thing with Marilyn. We don't have royalty in this country and so we had to create a royal family with these stars.

So we've got this orphaned kid, Norma Jean (as goddess), and an eccentric loner (as god), both talented people and I think that in some measure it was the populous that killed them. We put this on them.

No, it didn't. Mic Jagger is still alive and so is David Bowie.

Elton John was on drugs, too, but he got help. It happened to the Beatles in some measure but then they were really Americanized. Sting is really together--one of the healthiest stars. He was actually in Jungian therapy.