Interpretation is the primary intervention of psychoanalysis. Until now it has been discussed almost exclusively from a technical standpoint, rather than its relationship to the mind, human life, and how it affects the personality. This book explores the intrinsic nature of interpretation in psychoanalysis. For that purpose, two streams of thought are brought into dialogue with one another: Anglo-American psychoanalysis and Continental European philosophical hermeneutics, the study of meaning and interpretation. This book celebrates and makes explicit the value of interchanges between the paradigm of science and philosophical hermeneutics. It is divided into three sections, preceded by a discussion of the relationship between psychoanalysis, hermeneutics, and the sciences, with psychoanalysis at a crossroads seeking a new path. Part 1 starts with a consideration of Freud's methodology in The Interpretation of Dreams, moving to a review of ancient, romantic, and modern theories of interpretation as they relate to psychoanalysis.
A guide to retelling your personal, family, and cultural stories to transform your life, your relationships, and the world • Applies the latest neuroscience research on memory, brain mapping, and brain plasticity to the field of narrative therapy • Details mind-mapping and narrative therapy techniques that use story to change behavior patterns in ourselves, our relationships, and our communities • Explores how narrative therapy can help replace dysfunctional cultural stories with ones that build healthier relationships with each other and the planet We are born into a world of stories that quickly shapes our behavior and development without our conscious awareness. By retelling our personal, family, and cultural narratives we can transform the patterns of our own lives as well as the patterns that shape our communities and the larger social worlds in which we interact. Applying the latest neuroscience research on memory, brain mapping, and brain plasticity to the field of narrative therapy, Lewis Mehl-Madrona and Barbara Mainguy explain how the brain is specialized in the art of story-making and story-telling. They detail mind-mapping and narrative therapy techniques that use story to change behavior patterns in ourselves, our relationships, and our communities. They explore studies that reveal how memory works through story, how the brain recalls things in narrative rather than lists, and how our stories modify our physiology and facilitate health or disease. Drawing on their decades of experience in narrative therapy, the authors examine the art of helping people to change their story, providing brain-mapping practices to discover your inner storyteller and test if the stories you are living are functional or dysfunctional, healing or destructive. They explain how to create new characters and new stories, ones that excite you, help you connect with yourself, and deepen your intimate connections with others. Detailing how shared stories and language form culture, the authors also explore how narrative therapy can help replace dysfunctional cultural stories with those that offer templates for healthier relationships with each other and the planet.
Helping clients control their own emotional reactivity. When conditions like anxiety and depression are experienced chronically, they condition neural pathways and shape a person’s perception of and response to life events. As these pathways are reinforced, unhealthy neural networks turn on with increasing ease in the presence of conscious and unconscious triggers. In this groundbreaking book, Kershaw and Wade present Brain Change Therapy (BCT), a therapeutic protocol in which clients learn to manage their emotions and behaviors, and thus reduce stress and control emotional reactivity. Drawing from the latest neuroscientific research as well as integrative principles from hypnosis, biofeedback, and cognitive therapy, BCT helps clients reach stable neurological and emotional states and thus shift perspectives, attitudes, beliefs, and personal narratives toward the positive. BCT starts with the working assumption that effective therapeutic change must inevitably include a repatterning of neural pathways, and employs “self-directed neuroplasticity” through the active practicing of focused attention. As an adjunct to these methods, it helps clients create new, empowering life experiences that can serve as the basis for new neural patterns. The book begins by laying the foundation for body–mind and brain–body interventions by exploring the basics of the brain: its anatomy, neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, electrochemical processes, and the rhythms of the brain and body and nature. The authors set forth a detailed protocol for neuroassessment and evaluation of new clients, with particular attention to assessing a client’s habitually activated emotional circuits, neural imprints, state flexibility, level of arousal, and any relevant neurobiological conditions. The authors go on to outline BCT and its interventions geared toward stress reduction and state change, or the capacity to shift the mind from one emotional state to another and to shift the brain from one neural pattern to another. Protocols for specific presenting problems, such as fear, anxiety, and life-threatening and chronic illnesses are outlined in detail. Because of the breadth of the BCT approach, it is effective in working with individuals who are interested in shifting and conditioning peak performance states of consciousness, and the authors offer protocols for helping their clients reach peak professional performance as well. With this book, clinicians will be able to empower their clients to find their way out of a wide range of debilitating mental states.
From a pioneer in the field of mental health comes a groundbreaking book on the healing power of "mindsight," the potent skill that allows you to make positive changes in your brain–and in your life. Foreword by Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence • Is there a memory that torments you, or an irrational fear you can't shake? • Do you sometimes become unreasonably angry or upset and find it hard to calm down? • Do you ever wonder why you can't stop behaving the way you do, no matter how hard you try? • Are you and your child (or parent, partner, or boss) locked in a seemingly inevitable pattern of conflict? What if you could escape traps like these and live a fuller, richer, happier life? This isn't mere speculation but the result of twenty-five years of careful hands-on clinical work by Daniel J. Siegel, M.D. A Harvard-trained physician, Dr. Siegel is one of the revolutionary global innovators in the integration of brain science into the practice of psychotherapy. Using case histories from his practice, he shows how, by following the proper steps, nearly everyone can learn how to focus their attention on the internal world of the mind in a way that will literally change the wiring and architecture of their brain. Through his synthesis of a broad range of scientific research with applications to everyday life, Dr. Siegel has developed novel approaches that have helped hundreds of patients. And now he has written the first book that will help all of us understand the potential we have to create our own lives. Showing us mindsight in action, Dr. Siegel describes • a sixteen-year-old boy with bipolar disorder who uses meditation and other techniques instead of drugs to calm the emotional storms that made him suicidal • a woman paralyzed by anxiety, who uses mindsight to discover, in an unconscious memory of a childhood accident, the source of her dread • a physician–the author himself–who pays attention to his intuition, which he experiences as a "vague, uneasy feeling in my belly, a gnawing restlessness in my heart and my gut," and tracks down a patient who could have gone deaf because of an inaccurately written prescription for an ear infection • a twelve-year-old girl with OCD who learns a meditation that is "like watching myself from outside myself" and, using a form of internal dialogue, is able to stop the compulsive behaviors that have been tormenting her These and many other extraordinary stories illustrate how mindsight can help us master our emotions, heal our relationships, and reach our fullest potential.
Discover a brand-new perspective on how education will help us build the future with Lifelong Learning - Education for the Future World. This book provides fresh insights into top-of-the-line strategies and developing trends while delving deep into a variety of future perspectives on lifelong learning and the use of technology within the classroom. The wide range of topics in this volume provide the information you need to successfully navigate the intricacies of the digital world. Learn how individualized education and adaptable learning environments can help people prepare for a constantly ever-changing world. With a focus on inclusivity, equity, and the promotion of chances for lifelong learning for everyone, this book is an excellent asset for educators and anyone who wishes to know more about influencing the future of education. Join us on this exciting journey as we explore and discover how lifelong learning can empower people and transform society for future generations.
Self-knowledge: Why it matters to transform ourselves. What makes us who we are? Is it our intelligence, talent, or something else in life? Not as much as we think. Abhaya Tiwari argues - our vision of life is fogged by superficiality. It yearns granularity about our core constituents of self by plowing deeper into our inner self. Self–knowledge plays a critical role in accessing our true self that plays a far greater role in our understanding of our true self, purpose, success and happiness, untangling us from the vicissitudes of life. It matters even more in a disrupted world that is fragmented in our contemporary times, where self-knowledge and its application provide a distinctive edge for exponential growth. Self-knowledge is critical for self-transformation. It provides deeper understanding of self, viz; what it is and what it does, how it regulates and provides common-sense wisdom for its practical application in life. It provides much needed clarity about our true self, evaluation of world around our self, our purpose and competencies requiring mastery to achieve self-transformation. This book will also touch upon deeper understanding of neuropsychology of self and its true nature for high performance and happiness giving insights into human nature and its behavior. Abhaya Tiwari provides insights and guidance to parents, students, teachers, and working professionals to achieve what we set out to be in life and to be content and happy.
This book explores how natural landscapes are linked to positive mental wellbeing. While natural landscapes have long been represented and portrayed as transformative, the link to mental wellbeing is an area that researchers are still aiming to comprehend. Accompanying five groups of people to rural Scotland, the author considers individual, external and group motivations for journeying from urban environments, examining in what ways these excursions are personally and socially transformative. Far more than traversing mere physical boundaries, this book illustrates the new challenges, experiences, territories and cultures provided by these excursions, firmly anchored in the Scottish countryside. In doing so, the author questions the extent to which people’s own narratives link to the perception that the outdoors are positively transformative – and what indeed does have the power to influence transformation. Grounded in extensive qualitative research, this contemplative and ethnographic book will be of interest and value to students and scholars of the outdoors and its connection to wellbeing.
This volume is intended for professional philosophers and laymen with an interest in East-West studies and comparative philosophy and religion. The central focus is the concept of comparing perspectives from both the Eastern and the Western philosophical traditions on harmony and strife. The unique and happy result is an East-West anthology which is directed at analyzing a single philosophical problem which is of importance to both traditions. Unlike many anthologies which tend to be collections of isolated and unrelated essays, the Editors' focus on a single theme has resulted in a unified volume which maintains a high continuity of interest throughout. The Editors have carefully culled and organized essays from a select group of philosophers from the United States, West Germany, Japan, Australia, Beijing, Taipei and Hong Kong. Harmony and strife are analyzed as systematic concepts in Western philosophy, as parts of classical Chinese thought, as central concepts in Buddhism, as metaphysical concepts, as dialectical concepts and even as null concepts. The Editors have taken great care so that a continuity and a coherence of presentation is achieved despite the striking variety of perspectives from which harmony and strife are analyzed. It is both unusual and important to have such a systematic and thorough investigation of a topic of paramount social and philosophical significance by some of the leading minds of the day. Besides, the essays included are eminently readable. The volume is likely to become a standard work in this area for some years to come.
This book explores the central question of how to cultivate a continued sense of self in the radically changing Chinese society, a question that is highly related to the current ongoing educational reform. If education cannot respond to the problem of students’ disconnection from the changing society, learning cannot truly happen in school and the reform will fail. Zhang suggests a philosophy of education that highlights the cultivation of students’ unique but inclusive individuality so that students learn how to nurture their own mind in this profoundly changing society rather than becoming empty and lost. The discussion of this proposed question is inspired by the thoughts of the American pragmatist John Dewey and Chinese Confucian scholar Liang Shuming. It is not the author’s intention to have a pure philosophical discussion, but rather to refer to their philosophies to help answer the practical question of cultivating individuality in an educational setting during this period of China’s modern transition.
