Although psychoanalytic criticism has long been established as a practice in its own right, dialogue between the clinical and aesthetic has so far been perfunctory. This innovative book sets out to show in detail that there is a poetics of the unconscious equally at work in both domains, the critical potential of which has been missed by both sides.

In Part I, Wright focuses on the discoveries of Freudian psychoanalysis and demonstrates how the fundamental fantasies emerging in clinical practice are uncannily shared by works of art. This devotion of the unconscious to its phantasmic history is illustrated with examples from Freud, surrealist painting and Julia Kristeva's work on melancholia. In Part II, the focus shifts to Lacan's view of language as a means of agitating the unconscious of the reader. Part III takes examples from the rhetoric of clinical discourse, showing how practitioners are aware of a range of poetic meanings for both patient and analyst. The three parts demonstrate that all language is inescapably figural, as it betrays the operations of desire and fantasy in both aesthetic and clinical discourse.

This book is suitable for second- and third-year undergraduate students and above in literature and literary theory, feminism and gender studies, and psychoanalysis.

Claudio Naranjo's psychedelic autobiography with previously unpublished interviews and research papers * Explores Dr. Naranjo's pioneering work with MDMA, ayahuasca, cannabis, iboga, and psilocybin * Shares his personal accounts of psychedelic sessions and experimentation, including his work with Alexander "Sasha" Shulgin and Leo Zeff * Includes the author's reflections on the spiritual aspects of psychedelics and his recommended techniques for controlled induction of altered states In the time of the psychedelic pioneers, there were psychopharmacologists like Alexander "Sasha" Shulgin, psychonauts like Aldous Huxley, and psychiatrists like Humphrey Osmond. Claudio Naranjo was all three at once. He was the first to study the psychotherapeutic applications of ayahuasca, the first to publish on the effects of ibogaine, and a long-time collaborator with Sasha Shulgin in the research behind Shulgin's famous books. A Fulbright scholar and Guggenheim fellow, he worked with Leo Zeff on LSD-assisted therapy and Fritz Perls on Gestalt therapy. He was a presenter at the 1967 University of California LSD Conference and, 47 years later, gave the inaugural speech at the First International Conference on Ayahuasca in 2014. Across his career, Dr. Naranjo gathered more clinical experience in individual and group psychedelic treatment than any other psychotherapist to date. In this book, his final work, Dr. Naranjo shares his psychedelic autobiography along with previously unpublished interviews, session accounts, and research papers on the therapeutic effects of psychedelics, including MDMA, ayahuasca, cannabis, iboga, and psilocybin. The book includes Naranjo's reflections on the spiritual aspects of psychedelics and the healing transformations they bring, his philosophical explorations of how psychedelics act as agents of deeper consciousness, and his recommended techniques for controlled induction of altered states using different visionary substances. Naranjo's work shows that psychedelics have the strongest potential for transforming and healing people over all therapeutic methods currently in use.

Conversations on Consciousness is just that - a series of twenty lively and challenging conversations between Sue Blackmore and some of the world's leading philosophers and scientists. Written in a colloquial and engaging style, the book records the conversations Sue had when she met these influential thinkers, whether at conferences in Arizona or Antwerp, or in their labs or homes in Oxford or San Diego. The conversations bring out their very different personalities and styles and reveal a wealth of fascinating detail about their theories and beliefs. Why is consciousness such a special and difficult issue for twenty-first century science? Sue, herself a researcher into this controversial and difficult topic, begins by asking each of her colleagues this simple question and is immediately plunged into the depths of the debate: how do the subjective experiences we call consciousness arise from the physical brain? Is this even the right question to ask? Can zombies - people who behave outwardly just like others but have no inner mental life - exist? What can dreams tell us about consciousness? Should we all be learning to meditate?Do we have free will, and if not is it possible to live without it? With an introduction setting out the broad structure of the debate on consciousness, and an extensive glossary, this book provides an engaging and accessible account of the most challenging problem of all, through the words of some of the leading figures involved in seeking to solve it.

A groundbreaking new look at how we pay attention that can help us perform better - and be happier - in the digital world. Psychologist Gloria Mark began researching how technology affects human attention when offices were first getting computers. Over the last 30 years, she has tracked changes in our attention spans and stress levels, and in the fundamental way our brains process information. Now in Attention Span, Dr Mark shows how much of what we think we know about attention is wrong. She explores the current crisis of focus and productivity that is so deeply entwined with rising rates of anxiety and depression, and investigates what we might be able to do about it. Delving into the newly celebrated concept of 'kinetic attention', she introduces a more balanced understanding of the rhythm between deep focus and less focused states, which may actually serve to make us happier and more productive in the long term.

Carl Albrecht: Psychology of Mystical Consciousness is the first English translation of the ground-breaking study by the German medical doctor, psychotherapist and mystic Carl Albrecht (1902-1965), first published in 1951 as Psychologie des Mystischen Bewusstseins. The book, reprinted in Germany in 1976, 1990 and 2018, has remained untranslated to date and is now made available to international scholarship in an annotated English edition. The book offers the results of Albrecht's meticulous long-term empirical research into mystical consciousness. Albrecht's results are unique in that they derive from a pioneering methodological approach based on 'Autogenic Training', which enabled a practitioner to verbalize spontaneously what he/she is experiencing while immersed in an altered state of consciousness. These spontaneous utterances of mystical (and non-mystical) experience were concurrently recorded by Albrecht (supplemented by his own utterances recorded by a confidante) and provided him with invaluable empirical data for his detailed phenomenological analyses. The outcome was a most comprehensive, systematic psychological phenomenology of mystical consciousness informed by long-term empirical research, which is unique as regards authenticity, immediacy and scope. Unlike other empirical studies in this field, which are either based on records of mystical experience retrieved retrospectively, or derived from behaviorist research, or both, Albrecht's empirical data originate from immediate (not rationally mediated) verbal testimonies spoken by subjects while transported into a mystical state, in addition to records of great mystics from Eastern and Western mystical traditions. Psychology of Mystical Consciousness is now accessible to English-speaking scholars and scientists world-wide and will surely provide a new impetus to interdisciplinary enquiries into mysticism and the spiritual nature of man.

Memento mori is a broad and understudied cultural phenomenon and experience. The term "memento mori" is a Latin injunction that means "remember mortality," or more directly, "remember that you must die." In art and cultural history, memento mori appears widely, especially in medieval folk culture and in the well-known Dutch still life vanitas paintings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Yet memento mori extends well beyond these points in art and cultural history. In Death in Documentaries: The Memento Mori Experience, Benjamin Bennett-Carpenter suggests that documentaries are an especially apt form of contemporary memento mori. Bennett-Carpenter shows that documentaries may offer composed transformative experiences in which a viewer may renew one's consciousness of mortality - and thus renew one's life.

"Cognitive Iconology" is a new theory of the relation of psychology to art. Instead of being an application of psychological principles, it is a methodologically aware account of psychology, art and the nature of explanation. Rather than fight over biology or culture, it shows how they must fit together. The term "cognitive iconology" is meant to mirror other disciplines like cognitive poetics and musicology but the fear that images must be somehow transparent to understanding is calmed by the stratified approach to explanation that is outlined. In the book, cognitive iconology is a theory of cognitive tendencies that contribute to but are not determinative of an artistic meaning. At the center of the book are three case studies: images depicted within images, basic corrections to architectural renderings in images, and murals and paintings seen from the side. In all cases, there is a primitive perceptual pull that contribute to but do not override larger cultural meaning. The book then moves beyond the confines of the image to behavior around the image, and then ends with the concluding question of why some images are harder to understand than others. "Cognitive Iconology" promises to be important because it moves beyond the turf battles typically fought in image studies. It argues for a sustainable practice of interpretation that can live with other disciplines.

"Corporeality: Emergent consciousness within its spatial dimensions" develops our understanding of what we can experience through our bodies in relation to the space around us. Rather than considering architecture as being about manifestation and mediation of fixed meanings, the book focuses instead on architectural space as a field that envelopes us incessantly, intimately, and affectively. We are in immediate contact with that space, and the way we relate to it determines how we are able to grasp the realities of the social and material worlds around us. This enquiry considers architectural space and its impact on and relation to us from a range of disciplines and perspectives, leading from space to sense and to sensibility. The theatre becomes a central point of reference on this journey, allowing us to understand how space "works" by linking concrete spatial conditions to corresponding "forms of experience." It allows showing how the ways we feel, think, and act emerge from within the rich texture of the pre-conscious and non-contemplative. That texture is induced and nourished by our bodily encounters with space. Offering a view of how immediate experience is generated in the body, this book enhances empirical research into the links between space, body, experience and consciousness.

"Patterns of Creativity "reflects on the implications of recent neuro-science findings, evolutionary theory and linguistics for ideas about creativity and the practice of creativity. Kevin Brophy approaches questions of art and creation from-the-inside, that is as a poet himself. The conclusions about what it might mean to be a creative writer are counter-intuitive. What might it mean to understand the production of art as an evolutionary process with no endpoint and no goal? If consciousness is a minor player in decision-making and problem-solving as recent neuro-science findings suggest, how best might an artist manage conscious intentions while seeking to make original art? Brophy argues that consciousness must be managed in new ways if creativity is to be sourced, that much of what we learn in education is learned without consciousness being involved, that a writer must read with a particular agenda, that writing is itself a particular kind of communication beyond speech, requiring specific skills. He argues that the metaphor is not merely a poetic device but is central to the way human thought proceeds and the way communication happens. It is the strange and surprising view-from-within informed by those views science offers to art that preoccupy these investigations.

"Awakening the Performing Body" is an exemplary work of practice-based research presented in a pedagogical format. This text is clearly laid out for any acting teacher who wishes to pursue a more spiritual approach to acting and participate in the goal of reclaiming the sacred in theatre - or indeed for any acting teacher who seeks a more body centered and imaginative approach to character and actor-audience connections. This book is a crucial contribution to acting pedagogy. "Per K. Brask, University of Winnipeg, Canada" Here at last, is a deep, probing and totally fascinating inquiry into the palpable yet unseen forces at work and at play in the theatre. McCutcheon, flaming torch in hand, has entered the mysterious dark cavern where one knows there's a magic exchange. AWAKENING is an awakening - to link mind, body and spirit - to holistically mine acting education where the WHOLE person is engaged, so that magic we long for and crave, becomes something you can actually set out to entice into the light - not something one hopes might appear if we are lucky. An extraordinary work. "Dean Carey, Artistic Director/Founder, Actors Centre Australia"

Based on the idea that past and future life memories may be creations of the imagination and yet still be useful in healing, "A Practical Guide to Healing by Remembering Your Past and Future Lives" discuses a number of popular theories of memory creation and gives you practical tools to help you remember your other lives-past and future-to make the most of your life today.

Author Matt Gomes has researched the information to help you understand the theories of memory creation, storage, and retrieval; discover how the past affects the present and the present influences the future; and identify how your current physical and emotional issues are rooted in your past lives.

Even if you have doubt in the actual existence of reincarnation or of other lifetimes, "A Practical Guide to Healing by Remembering Your Past and Future Lives" can help you let go of fears and phobias, deal with death, understand, and forgive others. You "can" heal your present

Are there Buddhist conceptions of the unconscious? If so, are they more Freudian, Jungian, or something else? If not, can Buddhist conceptions be reconciled with the Freudian, Jungian, or other models? These are some of the questions that have motivated modern scholarship to approach alayavijnana, the storehouse consciousness, formulated in Yogacara Buddhism as a subliminal reservoir of tendencies, habits, and future possibilities. Tao Jiang argues convincingly that such questions are inherently problematic because they frame their interpretations of the Buddhist notion largely in terms of responses to modern psychology. He proposes that, if we are to understand alayavijnana properly and compare it with the unconscious responsibly, we need to change the way the questions are posed so that alayavijnana and the unconscious can first be understood within their own contexts and then recontextualized within a dialogical setting. In so doing, certain paradigmatic assumptions embedded in the original frameworks of Buddhist and modern psychological theories are exposed. Jiang brings together Xuan Zang's alayavijnana and Freud's and Jung's unconscious to focus on what the differences are in the thematic concerns of the three theories, why such differences exist in terms of their objectives, and how their methods of theorization contribute to these differences. ""Contexts and Dialogue"" puts forth a fascinating, erudite, and carefully argued presentation of the subliminal mind. It proposes a new paradigm in comparative philosophy that examines the what, why, and how in navigating the similarities and differences of philosophical systems through contextualization and recontextualization.

Breath is the flow of air between life and death. Breathing is an involuntary action that functions as the basis of all human activities, intellectual, artistic, emotional and physical. Breathing is the first autonomous individual action that brings life into being and the end of breathing is the definitive sign of disappearance. Starting from the question how breathing affects the body, levels of consciousness, perception and meaning, this book, for the first time, investigates through a variety of philosophical, critical and practical models, directly and indirectly related to breath, aiming to establish breath as a category in the production and reception of meaning within the context of theatre. It also explores the epistemological, psycho-physical and consciousness-related implications of breath. Aristotle dedicated a volume to breath exploring and enquiring in to its presocratic roots. For Heidegger, breath is "the temporal extension" of "Being." Artaud's theatricality is not representational but rather rooted in the actor's breathing. Jacques Derrida and Luce Irigaray investigate the phenomenon of breath in order to explain the nature of human consciousness. Breath as a philosophical concept and as a system of practice is central to Indian thoughts, performance, medicine, martial arts and spirituality. As the book argues, individual consciousness is a temporal experience and breath is the material presence of "time" in the body. Cessation of breath, on the contrary, creates pause in this flow of the endless identification of signifiers. When breath stops time stops. When time stops there is a 'gap' in the chain of the presence of signifiers and this 'gap' is a different perceptual modality, which is neutral in Zero velocity. "Restoration of Breath" is a practical approach to this psychophysical experience of consciousness in which time exists only in eternity and void beyond memory and meaning.

The term 'Implicit Learning' refers to the way in which knowledge of fairly complex, patterned material can be acquired without any conscious effort to learn it and with little to no awareness of what has been learned. Over the past fifty years, Implict Learning has became a vigorously researched area in the social sciences. In The Cognitive Unconscious, Arthur S. Reber and Rhianon Allen bring together several dozen experts from social science and neuroscience to present a broad overview of the exploration of the cognitive unconscious. Each chapter delves deeper into a subject that has become an interdisciplinary domain of research to which contributions have been made by sociologists, neuroscientists, evolutionary biologists, linguists, social and organizational psychologists, and sport psychologists, amongst many others. The book shows that unconscious, implicit cognitive processes play a role in virtually everything interesting that human beings do. As the contributors demonstrate, the implicit and explicit elements of cognition form a rich and complex interactive framework that make up who we are. With contributions from over thirty distinguished authors from nine different countries, The Cognitive Unconscious gives a balanced and thorough overview of where the field is today, over a half-century since the first experiments were run.

A Nobel Prize-winning scientist and a leading brain researcher show how the brain creates conscious experience. In A Universe of Consciousness, Gerald Edelman builds on the radical ideas he introduced in his monumental trilogy - Neural Darwinism, Topobiology, and The Remembered Present - to present for the first time an empirically supported full-scale theory of consciousness. He and the neurobiolgist Giulio Tononi show how they use ingenious technology to detect the most minute brain currents and to identify the specific brain waves that correlate with particular conscious experiences. The results of this pioneering work challenge the conventional wisdom about consciousness.