Books

This book collects all of James Hillman's papers on the alchemical imagination from 1980 to the present: "Therapeutic Value of alchemical Language"; "Silver and the White Earth I & II"; "Alchemical Blue and the Unio Mentalis"; "Salt: A Chapter in Alchemical Psychology"; "rudiments: Fire. Ovens, Vessels, Fuel, Glass"; "The Imagination of air and the collapse of alchemy"; "The Yellowing of the Work"; "White Supremacy"; "Concerning the Stone - Alchemical Images of the Goal"; "The Azure Vault: Caelum as Experience."

An important new study of the clinical conundrum surrounding the publication of patient material.

The publication, presentation, and discussion of case studies are essential to the dialogue of psychoanalysis. However, presenting patient material to the public by either disguising the patient's identity or asking for the patient's consent presents a clinical dilemma. In a series of interviews, Judy Leopold Kantrowitz asks 141 analysts not only to describe their thoughts about disguising a patient versus asking a patient's consent to appear in a paper, but also their perceptions of the clinical ramifications of a patient reading the material, whether by accident or design. In first-hand accounts, both analysts-as-patients and patients who are not themselves analysts relate the experience of reading about themselves, and reflect on the impact that reading had on their view of their analysts, themselves, and the analytic work.

Ethical concerns about confidentiality and decision making are examined both in theory and in the context of their clinical effect. Throughout the book, Kantrowitz examines the conscious and unconscious motives for analysts in writing about a patient, ultimately demonstrating that the conflict between the need to preserve patient privacy and the need for a literature including clinical material is not easily resolved.

In Jungian Literary Criticism: the essential guide, Susan Rowland demonstrates how ideas such as archetypes, the anima and animus, the unconscious and synchronicity can be applied to the analysis of literature. Jung's emphasis on creativity was central to his own work, and here Rowland illustrates how his concepts can be applied to novels, poetry, myth and epic, allowing a reader to see their personal, psychological and historical contribution.

This multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach challenges the notion that Jungian ideas cannot be applied to literary studies, exploring Jungian themes in canonical texts by authors including Shakespeare, Jane Austen and W. B. Yeats as well as works by twenty-first century writers, such as in digital literary art. Rowland argues that Jung's works encapsulate realities beyond narrow definitions of what a single academic discipline ought to do, and through using case studies alongside Jung's work she demonstrates how both disciplines find a home in one another. Interweaving Jungian analysis with literature, Jungian Literary Criticism explores concepts from the shadow to contemporary issues of ecocriticism and climate change in relation to literary works, and emphasises the importance of a reciprocal relationship. Each chapter concludes with key definitions, themes and further reading, and the book encourages the reader to examine how worldviews change when disciplines combine.

The accessible approach of Jungian Literary Criticism: the essential guide will appeal to academics and students of literary studies, Jungian and post-Jungian studies, literary theory, environmental humanities and ecocentrism. It will also be of interest to Jungian analysts and therapists in training and in practice.

Now on Netflix as a 4-part documentary series!

"Pollan keeps you turning the pages . . . cleareyed and assured." --New York Times

A #1 New York Times Bestseller, New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of 2018, and

A brilliant and brave investigation into the medical and scientific revolution taking place around psychedelic drugs--and the spellbinding story of his own life-changing psychedelic experiences

When Michael Pollan set out to research how LSD and psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) are being used to provide relief to people suffering from difficult-to-treat conditions such as depression, addiction and anxiety, he did not intend to write what is undoubtedly his most personal book. But upon discovering how these remarkable substances are improving the lives not only of the mentally ill but also of healthy people coming to grips with the challenges of everyday life, he decided to explore the landscape of the mind in the first person as well as the third. Thus began a singular adventure into various altered states of consciousness, along with a dive deep into both the latest brain science and the thriving underground community of psychedelic therapists. Pollan sifts the historical record to separate the truth about these mysterious drugs from the myths that have surrounded them since the 1960s, when a handful of psychedelic evangelists inadvertently catalyzed a powerful backlash against what was then a promising field of research.

A unique and elegant blend of science, memoir, travel writing, history, and medicine, How to Change Your Mind is a triumph of participatory journalism. By turns dazzling and edifying, it is the gripping account of a journey to an exciting and unexpected new frontier in our understanding of the mind, the self, and our place in the world. The true subject of Pollan's mental travelogue is not just psychedelic drugs but also the eternal puzzle of human consciousness and how, in a world that offers us both suffering and joy, we can do our best to be fully present and find meaning in our lives.

Pluralism can bridge the gaps that have opened up between personal experience, psychotherapy, and cultural criticism. In The Plural Psyche: Personality, Morality and the Father, a provocative, much praised and widely discussed book, Andrew Samuels lays bare the political implications of the personal struggle everyone has to hold their many inner divisions together. He also shows how pluralism can inspire new thinking in many areas including moral process, the construction of gender, and the role of the father in the development of sons and daughters. In addition, there are innovative chapters on clinical work, focusing on imagery and on countertransference. These themes come to life in a way that makes a significant contribution to debates about psychotherapy, gender, parenting and difference.

This Classic Edition of The Plural Psyche includes a new introduction by the author.　

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 psychosomatic pain of heartbreak and mourning shows neurobiological evidence of stress similar to being submitted to torture. With time, the intensity of the pain may lessen, yet it is false to think that time heals all wounds! Many live the rest of their life with a captive heart, alone in the emotional desert of psychic numbness. The first challenge is to become aware of the instinctual fear that makes us say "if you leave me, I'll-die". This fear poses a logical problem because to overcome it, you must learn to survive without the partner, which is precisely what you fear! You are like a patient who has been shot by an arrow? Cupid's arrow ?but is afraid to let the doctor pull it out. Living with an arrow sticking out from your chest makes life impossible. Recovery is not, as so many popular self-help books suggest today, an ego decision to move on. Recovery is the opposite of a willful decision, the opposite of an emotional shutting down which only mimics detachment. At the beginning of heartbreak, the brain reacts like that of a drug addict suddenly deprived of his or her drug. The behavior of the love-crazy is similar to that of the addict desperately searching for a fix. Hooked on hope, your brain is in a panic mode. Love is at the core of depressive, suicidal and murderous states. For the brain, lack of love, lack of food, lack of sleep, or a pit bull jumping at you are all kinds of threats. How you respond impacts not only your health but your destiny as well. In other words, either emotional suffering turns on the evolutionary switch, or your emotional shutting will destroy your capacity to love. This book summarizes what you need to learn, and to do to turn on that switch. I wrote from three different points of view. First, as a teacher and researcher in psychology, I spent most of my adult life studying the symptoms of lost love, tortuous love, smothering love, condemning love, controlling love, insufficient love, betrayed love, compulsive love, codependent love. This text is my report from the field: which theories are validated and which are not. Second, I am writing as a therapist who, for many years, listened to the stories of courageous individuals free falling from the summit of love, crashing down into the relational desert of mourning, grief, and loss. While witnessing their despair, I admired their courage. Love, its presence and absence, quality and quantity, form and essence, nurturing and toxic effects, its bitterness, and sweetness, is at the core of every therapy because love is fundamentally liberating. Love is also easily corrupted. Love develops the brain, but heartbreak transforms an otherwise functional adult into a cognitive dimwit. Love attaches itself to our neurotic traits, which then develop like barnacles on the hull of a boat. And last, I am writing as an individual who has suffered her fair share of heartbreaks. As a young woman, I plunged into the cavernous mouth of that mythical beast we call Love, like a frog jumping into the path of a lawnmower. This humbling experience taught me the contrast between the sweetness of love and the tragedy of remaining innocent about its power.

The art of living the "good life" requires skilful attunement to the lovely presences in everyday life. Lodged in a psychoanalytic sensibility, and drawing from ancient and modern religious and spiritual wisdom, this book provides the details, conceptual structures, and inner meanings of a number of easily accessible, everyday activities, including gardening, sport, drinking coffee, storytelling, and listening to music. It also suggests how to best engage these activities, to consecrate the ordinary in a way that points to experiential transcendence, or what the author calls "glimpsing immortality", a core component of the art of living the "good life".

This thesis describes the theory and methods of an original somatic approach to movement education. Based on the five Elements of ancient philosophical tradition, Elemental Movement integrates somatic and alchemical principles, processes, and practice. It employs movement as the primary vehicle for a wide range of personal explorations, using the Elements both as a framework and as a set of symbolic tools.