Drawing on the lessons of his own life and wisdom from the Bible, Morley presents hard-won perspectives on the seven seasons of Reflection, Building, Crisis, Renewal, Rebuilding, Suffering, and Success--and in so doing, addresses men's deep longing for direction and purpose.

In Patrick Morley's compelling follow-up to The Man in the Mirror, a man is taken beyond the day-to-day problems he faces and is confronted with seven major seasons of life that can make him or break him. Includes a leader's guide for small groups. In his phenomenally successful The Man in the Mirror, award-winning author Patrick Morley took men for a close-up on crucial aspects of their manhood and challenged them to establish wise priorities in life. In Seven Seasons of the Man in the Mirror, Morley shifts the focus to wide-angle. Looking at the broad sweep of life itself, he helps men determine where they are, where they're headed, and how to get there. Drawing on the lessons of his own life and wisdom from the Bible, Morley presents hard-won perspectives on the seven seasons of Reflection, Building, Crisis, Renewal, Rebuilding, Suffering, and Success--and in so doing, addresses men's deep longing for direction and purpose. With candor and passion, he speaks to issues every man must face. He illustrates them with true, modern-life stories. And he presents meaty questions for men to chew on and decisions for them to act on. This penetrating, richly encouraging book will help men turn from empty pursuits to the joy, passion, and eternal satisfaction of manhood's highest purpose. This book was previously titled The Seven Seasons of a Man's Life.

This book explores the history of the idea of the midlife crisis, using the writings of C.G. Jung and Goethe to investigate its relevance for today. Tracing how “the ages of humankind” became “the stages of life” in which the midlife crisis represents a pivotal moment, Paul Bishop offers a detailed analysis of a paper by Jung on this subject. He then shifts the focus to Goethe’s interest in Orphic wisdom, and one of Goethe’s major later poems, “Primal Words. Orphic” (Urworte Orphisch). Using Jungian ideas to explore the psychological implications of this poem, Bishop draws on Goethe’s own commentary, and other background material, to uncover its vital message. Reading Goethe at Midlife reveals the remarkable symmetry between the ideas and Jung and Goethe. Jung’s analysis of the stages of life, and his advice to heed the “call of the self,” are brought into the conjunction with Goethe’s emphasis on the importance of hope, showing an underlying continuity of thought and relevance from ancient wisdom, via German classicism to analytical psychology. At a time when many Jungians are turning to neuroscience to provide an external underpinning for Analytical Psychology, this scholarly book is very welcome: it returns to psychology’s home territory, placing Jung firmly in a long cultural tradition. Impressively well-read in many fields extending from literature and the history of ideas to psychoanalysis and Jungian studies, Paul Bishop allows a text by Jung and a late poem by Goethe to mirror and enhance each other, demonstrating Jung's intellectual proximity to the tradition of German classicism. The wealth of “amplifications” that Bishop brings to the many themes treated allows us to experience a living reality—a continuity of ideas across different times and cultures.