Shedding new light on the theme of "crisis" in Husserl's phenomenology, this book reflects on the experience of awakening to one's own naivete. Beginning from everyday examples, Knies examines how this awakening makes us culpable for not having noticed what was noticeable. He goes on to apply this examination to fundamental issues in phenomenology, arguing that the appropriation of naive life has a different structure from the reflection on pre-reflective life. Husserl's work on the "crisis" is presented as an attempt to integrate this appropriation into a systematic transcendental philosophy. Crisis and Husserlian Phenomenology brings Husserl into dialogue with other key thinkers in Continental philosophy such as Descartes, Kant, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Derrida. It is suitable for students and scholars alike, especially those interested in subjectivity, responsibility and the philosophy of history.

The cooperative action of different regions of our brains gives us an amazing capacity to perform activities as diverse as playing the piano and hitting a tennis ball. Somehow, without conscious effort, our eyes find the information we need to operate successfully in the world around us. The development of head-mounted eye trackers over recent years has made it possible to record where we look during different active tasks, and so work out what information our eyes supply to the brain systems that control our limbs. We are now in a position to explore the strategies that the eye movement system uses in the initiation and guidance of action.
Looking and Acting examines a wide range of visually guided behaviour, from sedentary tasks like reading and drawing, to dynamic activities such as driving and playing cricket. A central theme is that the eye movement system has its own knowledge about where to find the most appropriate information for guiding action - information not usually available to conscious scrutiny. Thus each type of action has its own specific repertoire of linked eye movements, acquired in parallel with the motor skills themselves. Starting with a brief background to eye movement studies, the book then reviews a range of observations and analyses of different activities. It ends with discussions of the nature of visual representation, the neurophysiology of the systems involved, and the roles of attention and learning.
Opening a field in eye movement research, this fascinating book will be of great interest to all vision scientists (psychologists, physiologists, ophthalmologists) whether at professional, graduate, or advanced undergraduate levels. It will also be of value to musicians, artists, sports scientists, and transport engineers, and indeed anyone intrigued by the way we sample the visual world.

Over the past two decades, a new picture of the cognitive unconscious has emerged from a variety of disciplines that are broadly part of cognitive science. According to this picture, unconscious processes seem to be capable of doing many things that were thought to require intention, deliberation, and conscious awareness. Moreover, they accomplish these things without the conflict and drama of the psychoanalytic unconscious. These processes range from complex information processing, through goal pursuit and emotions, to cognitive control and self-regulation.
This collection of 20 original chapters by leading researchers examines the cognitive unconscious from social, cognitive, and neuroscientific viewpoints, presenting some of the most important developments at the heart of this new picture of the unconscious.
The volume, the first book in the new Social Cognition and Social Neuroscience series, will be an important resource on the cognitive unconscious for researchers in cognitive psychology and neuroscience.

Why do we laugh? The answer, argued Freud in this groundbreaking study of humour, is that jokes, like dreams, satisfy our unconscious desires.

The Joke and Its Relation to the Unconscious (1905) explains how jokes provide immense pleasure by releasing us from our inhibitions and allowing us to express sexual, aggressive, playful or cynical instincts that would otherwise remain hidden. In elaborating this theory, Freud brings together a rich collection of puns, witticisms, one-liners and anecdotes, many of which throw a vivid light on the society of early twentieth-century Vienna. Jokes, as Freud shows, are a method of giving ourselves away.

‘Daring … brilliant and convincing’
John Carey

A new translation by Joyce Crick
With an Introduction by John Carey

General Editor: Adam Phillips

In recent years the nature of consciousness--our immediately known experiences--has taken its place as the most profound problem that science faces. Now in this brilliant and thoroughly accessible new book Colin McGinn takes a provocative position on this perplexing problem. Arguing that we can never truly "know" consciousness--that the human intellect is simply not equipped to unravel this mystery--he demonstrates that accepting this limitation in fact opens up a whole new field of investigation. In elegant prose, McGinn explores the implications of this Mysterian position--such as the new value it gives to the power of dreams and introspection--and challenges the reader with intriguing questions about the very nature of our minds and brains.

This accessible and comprehensive overview of the work of Stanislav Grof, one of the founders of transpersonal psychology, was specifically written to acquaint newcomers with his work. Serving as a summation of his career and previous works, this entirely new book is the source to introduce Grof's enormous contributions to the field of psychiatry and psychology, especially his central concept of holotropic experience, where holotropic signifies "moving toward wholeness". Grof maintains that the current basic assumptions and concepts of psychology and psychiatry require a radical revision based on the intensive and systematic research of holotropic experience. He suggests that a radical inner transformation of humanity and a rise to a higher level of consciousness might be humankind's only real hope for the future.

Consciousness is perhaps the most puzzling problem we humans face in trying to understand ourselves. It has been the subject of intense study for several decades, but, despite substantial progress, the most difficult problems have still not reached any generally agreed solution. Future research can start with this book. Eighteen original, specially written essays offer new angles on the subject. The contributors, who include many of the leading figures in philosophy of mind, discuss such central topics as intentionality, phenomenal content, knowledge of mental states, consciousness and the brain, and the relevance of quantum mechanics to the study of consciousness.

The book is about the joys and frustrations of lifelong learning, and about what drives us to learn as we move through our years. It follows the life-in-learning, from birth to death, of a character that the reader is invited to create. It examines many of life's important themes-a response to overwhelming choice, the instinct of self-protection-as they apply to a person's learning journey. Using a variety of psychoanalytic and philosophical lenses, and using the Psychic River as a metaphor, the text asks the question of what it means "to learn" and "to teach". It investigates factors that might break the fragile process of learning, and explores the complex motivations behind returning to learning. The book is of interest to educators and learners, to psychoanalysts and analysands, and to anyone who has ever wondered what drives us to learn or teach.