The Wisdom Of The Psyche

In the quest for identity and healing, what belongs to the humanities and what to clinical psychology? Ginette Paris uses cogent and passionate argument as well as stories from patients to teach us to accept that the human psyche seeks to destroy relationships and lives as well as to sustain them. This is very hard to accept which is why, so often, the body has the painful and dispiriting job of showing us what our psyche refuses to see. In jargon-free language, the author describes her own story of taking a turn downwards and inwards in the search for a metaphorical personal 'death'. If this kind of mortality is not attended to, then more literal bodily ailments and actual death itself can result. Paris engages with one of the main dilemmas of contemporary psychology and psychotherapy: how to integrate findings and insights from neuroscience and medicine into an approach to healing founded upon activation of the imagination. At present, she demonstrates, what is happening is damaging to both science and imagination.

This book promotes a strong argument for a ‘feminine’ approach to religious discovery: to struggle in the ambiguous gap between the wisdom of the psyche and the wisdom of Scripture, between our interior experience of God and the exterior reality of God. The Wisdom of the Psyche urges clergy to help parishioners bring forth their unconscious feelings and images to join their conscious thoughts. In this way, the church allows its members the space to present themselves fully to God and to be fully present to the human need around them.

The first edition of Wisdom of the Psyche engaged with one of the main dilemmas of contemporary psychology and psychotherapy: how to integrate findings and insights from neuroscience and medicine into an approach to healing founded upon activation of the imagination. In this revised edition, Ginette Paris re-focuses her attention on the modern lack of desire to become adult and updates the book with brand new neuroscientific research. Paris uses cogent and passionate argument, as well as stories from patients, to demonstrate that the human psyche seeks to destroy relationships and lives as well as to sustain them. She makes clear that the way out of those destructive states does not start with an upward, positive, wilful effort of the ego, but with an opening of the imagination, and aims to foster the dialogue between psychotherapists and neuroscientists. In clear and accessible language, Paris describes how depth psychology can be seen as a subject of the humanities rather than the sciences, and explains how gaining an understanding of neuroscience will not necessarily make us psychologically wiser. A unique and powerful book, Wisdom of the Psyche will be fascinating reading for Jungian and depth psychologists, psychotherapists, analysts and others in the helping professions, as well as students and those in training, and readers with an interest in psychology and neuroscience who want to create an inner life worth living.

The Wisdom of the Psyche encourages clergy to help parishioners bring forth their unconscious feelings and images to join their conscious thoughts. In this way, the church allows its members the space to present themselves fully to God and to be fully present to the human need around them.

Psychopath. The word conjurs up images of serial killers, rapists, suicide bombers, gangsters. But think again: you could probably benefit from being a little more psychopathic yourself. Psychologist Kevin Dutton has made a speciality of psychopathy, and is on first-name terms with many notorious killers. But unlike those incarcerated psychopaths, and all those depicted in movies and crime fiction, most are not violent, he explains. In fact, says Prof Dutton, they have a lot of good things going for them. Psychopaths are fearless, confident, charismatic and focused--qualities tailor-made for success in today's society. The Wisdom of Psychopaths is an intellectual rollercoaster ride that combines lightning-hot science with unprecedented access to secret monasteries, Special Forces training camps, and high-security hospitals. In it, you will meet serial killers, war heroes, financiers, movie stars and attorneys--and discover that beneath the hype and popular characterization, psychopaths have something to teach us. Like the knobs on a mixing deck, psychopathy is graded. And finding the right combination of psychopathic traits, sampled and mixed at carefully calibrated volumes, can put us ahead of the game.

One of America's preeminent psychiatrists draws on his famous Study of Adult Development to give us an exhilarating look at how the mind's defenses work. What we see as the mind's trickery, George Vaillant tells us, is actually healthy. What's more, it can reveal the mind at its most creative and mature, soothing and protecting us in the face of unbearable reality, managing the unmanageable, ordering disorder. And because creativity is so intrinsic to this alchemy of the ego, Vaillant mingles his studies of obscure lives with psychobiographies of famous artists and others--including Florence Nightingale, Sylvia Plath, Anna Freud, and Eugene O'Neill.

One of the greatest psychological thinkers of modern times, Jung's ideas about inner growth, wholeness, aging, spirituality, parenting, and mystical experience have revolutionized the way we think. The Wisdom of Carl Jung celebrates his visionary pursuits in mythology, alchemy, comparative religion, and the exploration of ancient systems of knowledge such as Taoism, the I Ching, Yoga, Hindu meditation, and Kabbalah. In this seminal addition to the Wisdom series, Jung allows readers to contemplate his fascinating ideas for themselves.

In the quest for identity and healing, what belongs to the humanities and what to clinical psychology? Ginette Paris uses cogent and passionate argument as well as stories from patients to teach us to accept that the human psyche seeks to destroy relationships and lives as well as to sustain them. This is very hard to accept which is why, so often, the body has the painful and dispiriting job of showing us what our psyche refuses to see. In jargon-free language, the author describes her own story of taking a turn downwards and inwards in the search for a metaphorical personal 'death'. If this kind of mortality is not attended to, then more literal bodily ailments and actual death itself can result. Paris engages with one of the main dilemmas of contemporary psychology and psychotherapy: how to integrate findings and insights from neuroscience and medicine into an approach to healing founded upon activation of the imagination. At present, she demonstrates, what is happening is damaging to both science and imagination.

At a time when poor choices are being made by notably intelligent and powerful individuals, this book analyzes a form of reasoning and decision-making that is not only productive and prudent, but serves as well a beneficial purpose for society. A Handbook of Wisdom includes contributions from some of the most prominent scholars in the field of wisdom research. Written from multiple perspectives, including psychology, philosophy, and religion, this book gives the reader an in-depth understanding of wisdom's past, present, and possible future direction within literature, science, and society.

1987 American Book Award Winner A A A This ambitious and enchanting novel is both modern-day epic and a work of great emotional and spiritual death. Bold in its historical scope, rich in colorful settings, and eminently readable, Confessions of Madame Psyche also reaches inward, toward quieter truths. A A A The novel is narrated by Mei0li Murrow, born in San Francisco in 1895, the illegitimate daughter of a charismatic confidence man and the Chinese prostitute he has "rescued" from the streets. After her mother's early death, Mei-li is left to care of her mercenary half-sister Erika. When the young Mei-li, by pure coincidence, predicts the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, Erika contructs her identity as "Madame Psyche"-exploiting Mei'li's exoticism and her clients' yearnings for contact with the dead in a series of ingeniously orchestrated seances that win her renown as a medium in California and then in the death-soaked Europe of the First World War. A A A Ironically, it is when she manages to finally reject the popular "spirituality" that has made her famous that Mei-li experiences a truer spiritual vision: One day, while walking on the beach, she has a revelation of her connection to all of life-"an experience of hidden reality which I have never doubted...and which left me permanently changed by what I then knew and know still and will always know." A A A Mei-li's subsequent journey leads her through the aspirations and disappointments of a utopian commune in the Santa Cruz Mountains in the 1920s; to the poverty of migrant work camps in the Depression-era Salinas Valley; and to the courage of the first strikes on San Jose's cannery row. Finally, when the relentless Erika cheats her out of an inheritance by having her committed to the Napa State Hospital, Mee-li finds her greatest wisdom and peace among the outcasts of the asylum-and there writes her "confessions." A A A Mei'li's story is ensconed in the rich history of Northern California in the first half of the twentieth century, and peopled by comrades of many classes and cultures and lovers both male and female; but her central odyssey remains one of inner discovery. In Confessions of Madame Psyche, Dorothy Bryant has created a character who is so honest in her search for truth, growth, and spiritual understanding that this quest becomes inherent to her survival.