Book picks similar to
Promises, Promises by Adam Phillips


essays
psychology
non-fiction
psychoanalysis

Literature And Science


Aldous Huxley - 1963
    This world of total human experience is the world that is (or at least ought to be) reflected and molded by the arts, above all by the art of literature. "What is the function of literature," Mr. Huxley asks, "what its psychology, what the nature of literary language? And how do its function, psychology and language differ from those of science? What in the past has been the relationship between literature and science? What is it now? What might it be in the future? And what would it be profitable, artistically speaking, for a twentieth-century man of letters to do about twentieth-century science?"Ours is the Age of Science; but from a study of the best contemporary literature one would find it difficult to infer this most obvious of facts. Contemporary poetry, drama and fiction contain remarkably few references to contemporary science—few references even to the metaphysical and ethical problems which contemporary science has raised. That this state of affairs should somehow be remedied is the theme of every recent discussion of "the Two Cultures." unfortunately most of these discussions have been carried on in abstract terms and with almost no citations of case histories, no references to the concrete problems of literary and scientific writing, no illustrative examples. Mr. Huxley has approached the subject in a different way. He deals with specific questions in the fields of immediate experience, of conceptualization, of philosophical interpretation and of verbal expression; and he illustrates these wide-ranging themes with copious quotations, drawn from a great variety of sources. He analyzes the nature of literary language and contrasts its many-meaninged richness with the simplified and jargonized language of science. He shows how the poets of earlier centuries made use of the scientific knowledge available to them. He gives examples of the ways in which modern science has modified and added to the traditional raw materials of literature. And he concludes with a speculative discussion of the ways in which future men of letters may work up the raw materials of brand new fact and revolutionary hypothesis provided by science, transfiguring them into a new kind of literature, capable of expression and at the same time coordinating and giving significance to the totality of an ever-widening human experience.

Love's Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy


Irvin D. Yalom - 1989
    Yalom uncovers the mysteries, frustrations, pathos, and humor at the heart of the therapeutic encounter. In recounting his patients' dilemmas, Yalom not only gives us a rare and enthralling glimpse into their personal desires and motivations but also tells us his own story as he struggles to reconcile his all-too human responses with his sensibility as a psychiatrist. Not since Freud has an author done so much to clarify what goes on between a psychotherapist and a patient.

Dreams


C.G. Jung - 1974
    Includes The Analysis of Dreams, 'On the Significance of Number Dreams, General Aspects of Dream Psychology, On the Nature of Dreams, Individual Dream Symbolism in Relation to Alchemy, and The Practical Use of Dream-Analysis.

The Event of Literature


Terry Eagleton - 2012
    What is literature? Can we even speak of "literature" at all? What do different literary theories tell us about what texts mean and do? In throwing new light on these and other questions he has raised in previous best-sellers, Eagleton offers a new theory of what we mean by literature. He also shows what it is that a great many different literary theories have in common.In a highly unusual combination of critical theory and analytic philosophy, the author sees all literary work, from novels to poems, as a strategy to contain a reality that seeks to thwart that containment, and in doing so throws up new problems that the work tries to resolve. The "event" of literature, Eagleton argues, consists in this continual transformative encounter, unique and endlessly repeatable. Freewheeling through centuries of critical ideas, he sheds light on the place of literature in our culture, and in doing so reaffirms the value and validity of literary thought today.

Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel


Lisa Zunshine - 2006
    It covers a broad range of fictional narratives, from Richardson’s Clarissa, Dostoyevski’s Crime and Punishment, and Austen’s Pride and Prejudice to Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Nabokov’s Lolita, and Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. Zunshine’s surprising new interpretations of well-known literary texts and popular cultural representations constantly prod her readers to rethink their own interest in fictional narrative. Written for a general audience, this study provides a jargon-free introduction to the rapidly growing interdisciplinary field known as cognitive approaches to literature and culture.

Consciousness and the Novel


David Lodge - 2002
    Lodge explores the representation of human consciousness in fiction, mainly English and American, in the light of recent investigations in science.

Mind Design II: Philosophy, Psychology, and Artificial Intelligence


John Haugeland - 1997
    Unlike traditional empirical psychology, it is more oriented toward the how than the what. An experiment in mind design is more likely to be an attempt to build something and make it work--as in artificial intelligence--than to observe or analyze what already exists. Mind design is psychology by reverse engineering.When Mind Design was first published in 1981, it became a classic in the then-nascent fields of cognitive science and AI. This second edition retains four landmark essays from the first, adding to them one earlier milestone (Turing's Computing Machinery and Intelligence) and eleven more recent articles about connectionism, dynamical systems, and symbolic versus nonsymbolic models. The contributors are divided about evenly between philosophers and scientists. Yet all are philosophical in that they address fundamental issues and concepts; and all are scientific in that they are technically sophisticated and concerned with concrete empirical research.ContributorsRodney A. Brooks, Paul M. Churchland, Andy Clark, Daniel C. Dennett, Hubert L. Dreyfus, Jerry A. Fodor, Joseph Garon, John Haugeland, Marvin Minsky, Allen Newell, Zenon W. Pylyshyn, William Ramsey, Jay F. Rosenberg, David E. Rumelhart, John R. Searle, Herbert A. Simon, Paul Smolensky, Stephen Stich, A.M. Turing, Timothy van Gelder

Cultural Psychology


Steven J. Heine - 2007
    The text incorporates examples from around the world and from everyday life to make the material relevant to a wide range of students. Research methods are emphasized throughout in order to demonstrate how cultural psychologists study the close-knit relationship between culture and the ways we think and behave. Three unique chapters bring an interdisciplinary dimension to the text, examining cultural evolution, mental health, and morality from the perspective of cultural psychology.

The Interpretation of Dreams


Sigmund Freud - 1899
    Dreams, according to his theory, represent the hidden fulfillment of our unconscious wishes.

The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves


Stephen Grosz - 2012
    These beautifully rendered tales illuminate the fundamental pathways of life from birth to death.A woman finds herself daydreaming as she returns home from a business trip; a young man loses his wallet. We learn, too, from more extreme examples: the patient who points an unloaded gun at a police officer, the compulsive liar who convinces his wife he's dying of cancer. The stories invite compassionate understanding, suggesting answers to the questions that compel and disturb us most about love and loss, parents and children, work and change. The resulting journey will spark new ideas about who we are and why we do what we do.

The Art of Loving


Erich Fromm - 1956
    As with every art, love demands practice and concentration, as well as genuine insight and understanding.In his classic work, The Art of Loving, renowned psychoanalyst and social philosopher Erich Fromm explores love in all its aspects—not only romantic love, steeped in false conceptions and lofty expectations, but also brotherly love, erotic love, self-love, the love of God, and the love of parents for their children.

The Ego Trick: In Search Of The Self


Julian Baggini - 2011
    His fascinating quest draws on the history of philosophy, but also anthropology, sociology, psychology and neurology; he talks to theologians, priests, allegedly reincarnated Lamas, and delves into real-life cases of lost memory, personality disorders and personal transformation; and, candidly and engagingly, he describes his own experiences. After reading "The Ego Trick," you will never see yourself in the same way again.

Attachment


John Bowlby - 1969
    Beginning with a discussion of instinctive behavior, its causation, functioning, and ontogeny, Bowlby proceeds to a theoretical formulation of attachment behavior how it develops, how it is maintained, what functions it fulfills. In the fifteen years since Attachment was first published, there have been major developments in both theoretical discussion and empirical research on attachment. The second edition, with two wholly new chapters and substantial revisions, incorporates these developments and assesses their importance to attachment theory.

The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction


Frank Kermode - 1967
    Here, he contributes a new epilogue to his collection of classic lectures on the relationship of fiction to age-old concepts of apocalyptic chaos and crisis. Prompted by the approach of the millennium, he revisits the book which brings his highly concentrated insights to bear on some of the most unyielding philosophical and aesthetic enigmas. Examining the works of writers from Plato to William Burrows, Kermode shows how they have persistently imposed their "fictions" upon the face of eternity and how these have reflected the apocalyptic spirit. Kermode then discusses literature at a time when new fictive explanations, as used by Spenser and Shakespeare, were being devised to fit a world of uncertain beginning and end. He goes on to deal perceptively with modern literaturewith "traditionalists" such as Yeats, Eliot, and Joyce, as well as contemporary "schismatics," the French "new novelists," and such seminal figures as Jean-Paul Sartre and Samuel Beckett. Whether weighing the difference between modern and earlier modes of apocalyptic thought, considering the degeneration of fiction into myth, or commenting on the vogue of the Absurd, Kermode is distinctly lucid, persuasive, witty, and prodigal of ideas.

When the Sun Bursts: The Enigma of Schizophrenia


Christopher Bollas - 2015
    He offers his interpretation of how schizophrenia develops, typically in the teens, as an adaptation in the difficult transition to adulthood.  With tenderness, Bollas depicts schizophrenia as an understandable way of responding to our precariousness in a highly unpredictable world.  He celebrates the courage of the children he has worked with and reminds us that the wisdom inherent in human beings—to turn to conversation with others when in distress—is the fundamental foundation of any cure for human conflict.