Animus and Anima: Two Essays


Emma Jung - 1955
    This book maps a way towards an understanding of the union of opposites and the emergence of the Self.

Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic


Esther Perel - 2006
    She invites us to explore the paradoxical union of domesticity and sexual desire, and explains what it takes to bring lust home.In her 20 years of clinical experience, Perel has treated hundreds of couples whose home lives are empty of passion. They describe relationships that are open and loving, yet sexually dull. What is going on?In this explosively original book, Perel explains that our cultural penchant for equality, togetherness, and absolute candor is antithetical to erotic desire for both men and women. Sexual excitement doesn't always play by the rules of good citizenship. It is politically incorrect. It thrives on power plays, unfair advantages, and the space between self and other. More exciting, playful, even poetic sex is possible, but first we must kick egalitarian ideals and emotional housekeeping out of our bedrooms.While Mating in Captivity shows why the domestic realm can feel like a cage, Perel's take on bedroom dynamics promises to liberate, enchant, and provoke. Flinging the doors open on erotic life and domesticity, she invites us to put the "X" back in sex.©2006 Esther Perel (P)2006 HarperCollins Publishers

Constructing The Self, Constructing America: A Cultural History Of Psychotherapy


Philip Cushman - 1995
    By tracing our various definitions of the self throughout history, Cushman reveals that psychotherapy is very much a product of a particular time and place—and that it has been fundamentally complicit in creating many of the ills it seeks to assuage.

The Upside of Being an Introvert


Brian Walsh - 2015
    From classrooms built around group learning to open-plan offices that encourage endless meetings, it sometimes seems that the 21st century is designed for the extroverted. This TIME Spotlight Story explores the Upside of Being an Introvert.

Existentialism and Humanism: Jean-Paul Sartre


Gerald Jones - 2003
    It is suitable for both A Level and HE philosophy students. historical context; a section by section guide to Existentialism and Humanism including key quotes; tasks and activities to help you understand and evaluate Sartre's philosophy; and a critical analysis of the philosophical implications of Sartre's ideas. It also offers summaries of key points needed for exam questions about Sartre and existentialism plus an extensive glossary of key words and ideas focused coverage of AS and A2 Philosophy

From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death


Caitlin Doughty - 2017
    From Zoroastrian sky burials to wish-granting Bolivian skulls, she investigates the world’s funerary customs and expands our sense of what it means to treat the dead with dignity. Her account questions the rituals of the American funeral industry—especially chemical embalming—and suggests that the most effective traditions are those that allow mourners to personally attend to the body of the deceased. Exquisitely illustrated by artist Landis Blair, From Here to Eternity is an adventure into the morbid unknown, a fascinating tour through the unique ways people everywhere confront mortality.

Broken Glass: A Family's Journey Through Mental Illness


Robert V. Hine - 2006
    As an early baby boomer, Elene reached adolescence and young womanhood in the midst of the counterculture years. Her father, a respected professor of American history at the University of California, shares the story of his family's struggle to keep Elene on track and functional, to see her through her troubles with delusions, medication, and eventually to help her raise her own children.Candid in its portrayal of the suffering Elene and her parents endured and the stumbling efforts of doctors and hospitals, Hine's story is also generous and inspiring. In spite of unimaginable difficulties, Elene and her father preserved their relationship and survived.My daughter has given me permission to go ahead with the effort, [but] I know she would react quite differently to many of the events. Where I felt sadness and dejection, she very likely felt release and exultation. Where I felt helplessness, she very likely felt in happy control. Where I saw confusion and delusion, she may well have seen purpose and steadiness. This is not the story she would tell. It is solely mine, solely the viewpoint of one man, solely a father's feelings about his daughter.--from Robert Hine's Preface to Broken Glass

Psychodynamic Therapy: A Guide to Evidence-Based Practice


Richard F. Summers - 2009
    The book reflects an openness to new influences on dynamic technique, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy and positive psychology. It offers a fresh understanding of the most common problems for which patients seek help--depression, obsessionality, low self-esteem, fear of abandonment, panic, and trauma--and shows how to organize and deliver effective psychodynamic interventions. Extensive case material illustrates each stage of therapy, from engagement to termination. Special topics include ways to integrate individual treatment with psychopharmacology and with couple or family work. See also Practicing Psychodynamic Therapy: A Casebook, edited by Summers and Barber, which features 12 in-depth cases that explicitly illustrate the approach in this book.

The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life


Anu Partanen - 2016
    She found that navigating the basics of everyday life—from buying a cell phone and filing taxes to education and childcare—was much more complicated and stressful than anything she encountered in her homeland. At first, she attributed her crippling anxiety to the difficulty of adapting to a freewheeling new culture. But as she got to know Americans better, she discovered they shared her deep apprehension. To understand why life is so different in the U.S. and Finland, Partanen began to look closely at both.In The Nordic Theory of Everything, Partanen compares and contrasts life in the United States with life in the Nordic region, focusing on four key relationships—parents and children, men and women, employees and employers, and government and citizens. She debunks criticism that Nordic countries are socialist “nanny states,” revealing instead that it is we Americans who are far more enmeshed in unhealthy dependencies than we realize. As Partanen explains step by step, the Nordic approach allows citizens to enjoy more individual freedom and independence than we do.Partanen wants to open Americans’ eyes to how much better things can be—to show her beloved new country what it can learn from her homeland to reinvigorate and fulfill the promise of the American dream—to provide the opportunity to live a healthy, safe, economically secure, upwardly mobile life for everyone. Offering insights, advice, and solutions, The Nordic Theory of Everything makes a convincing argument that we can rebuild our society, rekindle our optimism, and restore true freedom to our relationships and lives.

The Four Temperaments: 1 Lecture, Berlin, March 4, 1909 (Cw 57)


Rudolf Steiner - 1985
    Rudolf Steiner describes how each person's combination of temperaments is shaped out of a particular kind of union between hereditary factors and the inner spiritual nature. Telling descriptions are provided for the inwardly comfortable phlegmatic, the fickle interest of the sanguine, the pained and gloomy melancholic, and the fiery, assertive choleric. Steiner also offers practical suggestions for guiding the temperaments educationally in childhood and for adult self-improvement.

The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life


Sheldon Solomon - 2015
    In 1974, cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker won the Pulitzer Prize for his book The Denial of Death, arguing that the terror of death has a pervasive effect on human affairs. Now authors Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski clarify with wide-ranging evidence the many ways the worm at the core guides our thoughts and actions, from the great art we create to the devastating wars we wage. The Worm at the Core is the product of twenty-five years of in-depth research. Drawing from innovative experiments conducted around the globe, Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski show conclusively that the fear of death and the desire to transcend it inspire us to buy expensive cars, crave fame, put our health at risk, and disguise our animal nature. The fear of death can also prompt judges to dole out harsher punishments, make children react negatively to people different from themselves, and inflame intolerance and violence.   But the worm at the core need not consume us. Emerging from their research is a unique and compelling approach to these deeply existential issues: terror management theory. TMT proposes that human culture infuses our lives with order, stability, significance, and purpose, and these anchors enable us to function moment to moment without becoming overwhelmed by the knowledge of our ultimate fate.

The Mansion of Happiness: A History of Life and Death


Jill Lepore - 2012
    How does life begin? What does it mean? What happens when we die? “All anyone can do is ask,” Lepore writes. “That's why any history of ideas about life and death has to be, like this book, a history of curiosity.” Lepore starts that history with the story of a seventeenth-century Englishman who had the idea that all life begins with an egg and ends it with an American who, in the 1970s, began freezing the dead. In between, life got longer, the stages of life multiplied, and matters of life and death moved from the library to the laboratory, from the humanities to the sciences. Lately, debates about life and death have determined the course of American politics. Each of these debates has a history. Investigating the surprising origins of the stuff of everyday life—from board games to breast pumps—Lepore argues that the age of discovery, Darwin, and the Space Age turned ideas about life on earth topsy-turvy. “New worlds were found,” she writes, and “old paradises were lost.” As much a meditation on the present as an excavation of the past, The Mansion of Happiness is delightful, learned, and altogether beguiling.

A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder - How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-The-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place


Eric Abrahamson - 2006
    But most people still shun disorder-or suffer guilt over the mess they can't avoid. No longer!With a spectacular array of true stories and case studies of the hidden benefits of mess,A Perfect Mess overturns the accepted wisdom that tight schedules, organization, neatness, and consistency are the keys to success. Drawing on examples from business, parenting, cooking, the war on terrorism, retail, and even the meteoric career of Arnold Schwarzenegger, coauthors Abrahmson and Freedman demonstrate that moderately messy systems use resources more efficiently, yield better solutions, and are harder to break than neat ones.Applying this idea on scales both large (government, society) and small (desktops, garages), A Perfect Mess uncovers all the ways messiness can trump neatness, and will help you assess the right amount of disorder for any system. Whether it's your company's management plan or your hallway closet that bedevils you, this book will show you why to say yes to mess.

Notes to Each Other


Hugh Prather - 1990
    Prather subtitled the book, "My struggle to become a person." It was the deeply felt record of his journey to a state of heightened self-knowledge and spiritual flowering. It became a perennial best-seller, and continues to enlighten, comfort, and amuse to this day.Notes to Each Other bravely explores the heart of a relationship that has lasted for 35 years—the relationship between Hugh and Gayle Prather. With remarkable candor, one couple traces the emotional route traveled to reach the coveted place where genuine communication, cooperation, and compassion dwell. First published 10 years ago, the book has here been updated and enlarged by the greater wisdom that comes with the experience of raising children and growing older together.Although drawn from two hearts, the book speaks with one voice, asking the questions all couples ask, from "Did I choose the right person?" to "How can you stand me?" Let it speak to you.

Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces that Shape How We Think, Feel, and Behave


Adam Alter - 2013
    Armed with surprising data and endlessly fascinating examples, Adam Alter addresses the subtle but substantial ways in which outside forces influence us--such as color’s influence on mood, our bias in favor of names with which we identify, and how sunny days can induce optimism as well as aggression. Drunk Tank Pink proves that the truth behind our feelings and actions goes much deeper than the choices we take for granted every day.