In the quest for identity and healing, what belongs to the humanities and what to clinical psychology? Ginette Paris uses cogent and passionate argument as well as stories from patients to teach us to accept that the human psyche seeks to destroy relationships and lives as well as to sustain them. This is very hard to accept which is why, so often, the body has the painful and dispiriting job of showing us what our psyche refuses to see. In jargon-free language, the author describes her own story of taking a turn downwards and inwards in the search for a metaphorical personal 'death'. If this kind of mortality is not attended to, then more literal bodily ailments and actual death itself can result. Paris engages 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. At present, she demonstrates, what is happening is damaging to both science and imagination.

1987 American Book Award Winner A A A This ambitious and enchanting novel is both modern-day epic and a work of great emotional and spiritual death. Bold in its historical scope, rich in colorful settings, and eminently readable, Confessions of Madame Psyche also reaches inward, toward quieter truths. A A A The novel is narrated by Mei0li Murrow, born in San Francisco in 1895, the illegitimate daughter of a charismatic confidence man and the Chinese prostitute he has "rescued" from the streets. After her mother's early death, Mei-li is left to care of her mercenary half-sister Erika. When the young Mei-li, by pure coincidence, predicts the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, Erika contructs her identity as "Madame Psyche"-exploiting Mei'li's exoticism and her clients' yearnings for contact with the dead in a series of ingeniously orchestrated seances that win her renown as a medium in California and then in the death-soaked Europe of the First World War. A A A Ironically, it is when she manages to finally reject the popular "spirituality" that has made her famous that Mei-li experiences a truer spiritual vision: One day, while walking on the beach, she has a revelation of her connection to all of life-"an experience of hidden reality which I have never doubted...and which left me permanently changed by what I then knew and know still and will always know." A A A Mei-li's subsequent journey leads her through the aspirations and disappointments of a utopian commune in the Santa Cruz Mountains in the 1920s; to the poverty of migrant work camps in the Depression-era Salinas Valley; and to the courage of the first strikes on San Jose's cannery row. Finally, when the relentless Erika cheats her out of an inheritance by having her committed to the Napa State Hospital, Mee-li finds her greatest wisdom and peace among the outcasts of the asylum-and there writes her "confessions." A A A Mei'li's story is ensconed in the rich history of Northern California in the first half of the twentieth century, and peopled by comrades of many classes and cultures and lovers both male and female; but her central odyssey remains one of inner discovery. In Confessions of Madame Psyche, Dorothy Bryant has created a character who is so honest in her search for truth, growth, and spiritual understanding that this quest becomes inherent to her survival.

Traditional concepts of God are no longer tenable for many people who nevertheless experience a strong sense of the sacred in their lives. The Religious Function of the Psyche offers a psychological model for the understanding of such experience, using the language and interpretive methods of depth psychology, particularly those of C.G. Jung and psychoanalytic self psychology. The problems of evil and suffering, and the notion of human development as an incarnation of spirit are dealt with by means of a religious approach to the psyche that can be brought easily into psychotherapeutic practice and applied by the individual in everyday life. The book offers an alternative approach to spirituality as well as providing an introduction to Jung and religion.

Depth psychologist Plotkin describes himself as a "psychologist gone wild." As a cultural visionary, author, and wilderness guide, he's been breaking trail for decades. Plotkin's revisioning of psychology invites readers into a conscious and embodied relationship with the more-than-human world.

A simple yet sophisticated model of personal growth that can lead to lasting change, drawn from the truths of psychoanalysis.

Underscores the limitations of traditional psychology to envision a more healthy ecological and psychological future.