Publisher's note on this book: This book is a radical leap into the apex of philosophy, psychology, and the science of seeing what's real for oneself. Written in a dense and penetrating style that is designed to induce deep thinking and thoughtful reflection, the book explains how to attain lucidity, a type of acute, profound awareness that serves as the fundamental base for Gnosis, individual illumination. It may not be an easy read the first time through, but it will be well worth it. The book is meant to be studied and reflected upon many times. This book is impeccable, more of an experience than just a book with profound information. It is a potent toolshed of ideas that will be of interest to psychologists, philosophers, social scientists, meditators, contemplatives, or anyone who wants to know what's really going on and how to SEE in a very clear and luminous way.

Over recent years, the psychology of concepts has been rejuvenated by new work on prototypes, inventive ideas on causal cognition, the development of neo-empiricist theories of concepts, and the inputs of the budding neuropsychology of concepts. But our empirical knowledge about concepts has yet to be organized in a coherent framework.
In Doing without Concepts, Edouard Machery argues that the dominant psychological theories of concepts fail to provide such a framework and that drastic conceptual changes are required to make sense of the research on concepts in psychology and neuropsychology. Machery shows that the class of concepts divides into several distinct kinds that have little in common with one another and that for this very reason, it is a mistake to attempt to encompass all known phenomena within a single theory of concepts. In brief, concepts are not a natural kind. Machery concludes that the theoretical notion of concept should be eliminated from the theoretical apparatus of contemporary psychology and should be replaced with theoretical notions that are more appropriate for fulfilling psychologists' goals. The notion of concept has encouraged psychologists to believe that a single theory of concepts could be developed, leading to useless theoretical controversies between the dominant paradigms of concepts. Keeping this notion would slow down, and maybe prevent, the development of a more adequate classification and would overshadow the theoretical and empirical issues that are raised by this more adequate classification. Anyone interested in cognitive science's emerging view of the mind will find Machery's provocative ideas of interest.

There are no atheists in foxholes; or so we hear. The thought that the fear of death motivates religious belief has been around since the earliest speculations about the origins of religion. There are hints of this idea in the ancient world, but the theory achieves prominence in the works of Enlightenment critics and Victorian theorists of religion, and has been further developed by contemporary cognitive scientists. Why do people believe in gods? Because they fear death. Yet despite the abiding appeal of this simple hypothesis, there has not been a systematic attempt to evaluate its central claims and the assumptions underlying them. Do human beings fear death? If so, who fears death more, religious or nonreligious people? Do reminders of our mortality really motivate religious belief? Do religious beliefs actually provide comfort against the inevitability of death? In Death Anxiety and Religious Belief, Jonathan Jong and Jamin Halberstadt begin to answer these questions, drawing on the extensive literature on the psychology of death anxiety and religious belief, from childhood to the point of death, as well as their own experimental research on conscious and unconscious fear and faith. In the course of their investigations, they consider the history of ideas about religion's origins, challenges of psychological measurement, and the very nature of emotion and belief.

Joseph Pieper and Marinus van Uden have proposed a book consisting of previously published papers on the topics of religion, coping, and mental health care. It covers quite a bit of territory: the complex relationships be-tween religion and mental health, surveys that present the views of therapists and patients about the interface between religion and mental health, a case study of a religious patient struggling with psychological problems, empirical studies of religious coping among various groups, and a method for teaching the clinical psychology of religion. Although the papers are diverse, they are unified by several themes. First, the papers convey a balanced approach to religion and psychology. They speak to the potentially positive and negative contributions religion can make to health and well-being. Second, several of the papers focus on the role of religious coping among patients in the Netherlands. This focus is noteworthy since the large majority of this theory and research has been limited to the USA. Third, they underscore the value of a cross-cultural approach to the field. Their surveys point to the importance of religious/worldview perspec-tives to many patients (and therapists) in the Netherlands, even though the culture is more secularised than the USA. However, their papers also suggest that the manifestation of these religious/worldview perspectives may take different shape in the Netherlands. Fourth, the papers have clinical relevance. The case history of the obsessive-compulsive patient by Van Uden (ch. 4) contains an excellent example of the way in which religious resources can be accessed to counter dysfunctional behaviours. This volume shows initial effort in a newly emerging area of study. It is encouraging to see a significant body of research and practice on the psy-chology of religion and coping coming out of the Netherlands. It could stimu-late further advances in a more cross-culturally sensitive, clinical psychology of religion. Kenneth Pargament Professor of Psychology at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, USA. Dr. Joseph Z.T. Pieper (1953) works as an assistant professor in psychology of religion and pastoral psychology at the Department of Theology at Utrecht University and at the Catholic Theological University Utrecht, the Nether-lands. Prof. dr. Marinus H.F. van Uden (1952) works as a professor in clinical psychology of religion at Tilburg University and Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and he is a licensed clinical psychologist and psychotherapist.

In this book, a distinguished historian of medicine surveys the basic elements that have constituted psychological healing over the centuries. Dr. Stanley W. Jackson shows that healing practices, whether they come from the worlds of medicine, religion, or philosophy, share certain elements that transcend space and time. Drawing on medical writings from classical Greece and Rome to the present, as well as on philosophical and religious writings, Dr. Jackson shows that the basic ingredients of psychological healing—which have survived changes of name, the fall of their theoretical contexts, and the waning of social support in different historical eras—are essential factors in our modern psychotherapies and in healing contexts in general.

Jung was intrigued from early in his career with coincidences, especially those surprising juxtapositions that scientific rationality could not adequately explain. He discussed these ideas with Albert Einstein before World War I, but first used the term "synchronicity" in a 1930 lecture, in reference to the unusual psychological insights generated from consulting the "I Ching." A long correspondence and friendship with the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Wolfgang Pauli stimulated a final, mature statement of Jung's thinking on synchronicity, originally published in 1952 and reproduced here. Together with a wealth of historical and contemporary material, this essay describes an astrological experiment Jung conducted to test his theory. "Synchronicity" reveals the full extent of Jung's research into a wide range of psychic phenomena.

This paperback edition of Jung's classic work includes a new foreword by Sonu Shamdasani, Philemon Professor of Jung History at University College London.