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.
Preface. Introduction. Denting My Thick Skull. A Fable: Mom, Dad, and Me, Me, Me. Mother as Archetype. Father as Archetype. Ideas and Emotions. Brother Philosophy, Sister Psychology. Psyche is Invisible. The Night Vision. The Virtual Reality of the Psyche. Modeling the Soul. Looking for a Savior. How Sick Am I, Doctor? Is Therapy an Investment? The Legal Model of Psychotherapy. Joy is the Best Teacher.
Biography
Ginette Paris is a psychologist, therapist and writer. She teaches Archetypal and Depth Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, California. She is the author of several other books, translated into seven languages.
‘Emotionally personal, immediately useful, surprisingly original, beautifully deep, this page-turning read also turns the page into a new century of psychology. What an achievement.’ James Hillman, Pulitzer Nominee for Re-Visioning Psychology (HarperPerennial, 1992) and bestselling author of The Soul’s Code (Random House, 1996)
‘Once again Ginette Paris demonstrates that she is quite simply the most original and eloquent of all writers on contemporary depth psychology.’ Michael Vannoy Adams, Jungian analyst and author of For Love of the Imagination (Routledge, 2014)
‘Paris gently and powerfully embeds depth psychology in the humanities, making Wisdom of the Psyche essential reading for the twenty-first century. We are all the richer for it.’ Susan Rowland, Chair of Engaged Humaities and the Creative Life, Pacifica Graduate Institute, USA, and author of The Ecocritical Psyche (Routledge, 2012)
‘Every once in a rare while a book comes into one's hands that is so satisfying that it's hard to write about it without drenching every sentence in superlatives. This is such a book.’ – Lyn Cowan, Jungian analyst and author of Tracking the White Rabbit (Routledge, 2002)
