The brain functions like a computer composed of subsystems which in teract in a hierarchical manner. But it is not a single hierarchy, but a com plex system of hierarchies each of which has its very own and unique fea ture. One of these concerns the cyclic or rhythmic control of neuronal ac tivities which, among others, give rise to alternating states of wakefulness and sleep. The phenomenon of sleep still remains a mystery. The present monograph does not give us any new insights into its meaning and significance. Yet sleep research may not be the same after the appearance of this book be cause it gives us a comprehensive mathematical theory which opens our eyes to new insights into the mechanism of the rhythm generation that under lies the "wake-sleep" cycle. No one who has worked his way through this book can again look at ex perimental data without recognizing features which the "models" developed in its various chapters so strikingly reveal."

How much of what we do is directed by conscious, deliberate decisions and how much originates in unconscious, automatic directives? This is the question explored in The Two of Me via an engaging combination of phenomenological subjective investigation and objective considerations of mental processes and specific structures. John Birtchnell puts forward the thesis that many more of our actions than we might imagine are determined unconsciously. Not only are unnoticed automatic actions motivated unconsciously, but also seemingly conscious or 'thought out' behaviours are actually determined and reinforced by unconscious exigencies. Even where we produce a reasoned discourse taking responsibility for why we hold certain thoughts, there is always the possibility that these explanations serve and follow from an unconscious driving force. The conscious mind seems to act as spokesperson for both itself and the unconscious mind. Investigating this dual aspect of the person, the book addresses the issue across a range of mental processes including memory, language, problem-solving, dreams, delusions, hallucinations and more complex constructs such as the arts, humour and religion.

As Alice in Wonderland discovered, cave entrances, tunnels, spirals and mirrors can transport people to strange worlds where anything is possible. Portals investigates how we move beyond the conscious and physical world using our senses, into other realities of the spiritual and the divine. Portals looks at the techniques used to alter consciousness practised by shamans, monks and other religious specialists. These include the use of drugs, as well as drumming, chanting and meditation. The book provides a new, anthropologically-grounded perspective on the wide-ranging questions about the realities of human consciousness and mystical, spiritual and religious experience.

An argument that the meaning of written or auditory linguistic signals is not derived from the input but results from the brain's internal construction process. When we read a text or listen to speech, meaning seems to be given to us instantaneously, as if it were part of the input. In Meaning in the Brain, Giosue Baggio explains that this is an illusion created by the tremendous speed at which sensory systems and systems for meaning and grammar operate in the brain. Meaning, Baggio argues, is not derived from input but results from the brain's internal construction process. With this book, Baggio offers the first integrated, multilevel theory of semantics in the brain, describing how meaning is generated during language comprehension, production, and acquisition. Baggio's theory draws on recent advances in formal semantics and pragmatics, including vector-space semantics, discourse representation theory, and signaling game theory. It is designed to explain a growing body of experimental results on semantic processing that have accumulated in the absence of a unifying theory since the introduction of electrophysiology and neuroimaging methods. Baggio argues that there is evidence for the existence of three semantic systems in the brain-relational semantics, interpretive semantics, and evolutionary semantics-and he discusses each in turn, developing neural theories of meaning for all three. Moreover, in the course of his argument, Baggio addresses several long-standing issues in the neuroscience of language, including the role of compositionality as a principle of meaning construction in the brain, the role of sensory-motor processes in language comprehension, and the neural and evolutionary links among meaning, consciousness, sociality, and action.

Understanding Dreams and Other Spontaneous Images: The Invisible Storyteller applies a contemporary interdisciplinary approach to dream interpretation, bringing cognitive anthropology, folklore studies, affective neuroscience, and dynamic systems theory to bear on contemporary psychodynamic clinical practice. It provides a practical guide for working with dreams that can be used by both individuals on their own and therapists working with clients. Erik D. Goodwyn invites us to examine key features of reported dreams, such as the qualities of the environment depicted, its familiarity or unfamiliarity, the nature of the characters encountered, and overall themes. This method facilitates an understanding of the dream in the full context of the dreamer's life, rather than interpreting individual, isolated elements. Goodwyn also introduces the mental process which orchestrates dreams, conceptualised here as the 'Invisible Storyteller', and explores how understanding it can positively impact satisfaction in waking life. As a whole, the book provides a collection of tools and techniques which can be referred to time and again, as well as a wealth of examples. Exploring dreams as a natural source of clinical insight, The Invisible Storyteller will appeal to Jungian psychotherapists and analytical psychologists, other professionals working with dreams with clients, and readers looking for a scientific approach to dream interpretation.

For nearly four decades, Trancework has been the definitive textbook for thousands of professionals undergoing training in the art and science of clinical hypnosis. Now in its 5th edition, this classic text continues its legacy of encouraging sound clinical practice based in established scientific research. This latest edition incorporates new studies and emerging topics within the field of hypnosis, including new chapters on depression and the construction of process-oriented interventions. Readers can expect to receive a comprehensive overview of current developments in the domain of hypnosis, an in-depth consideration of the practical and ethical issues associated with its use, and a greater appreciation for its many therapeutic applications. This thorough, engaging text equips professionals with the essential skills to change clients' lives by using hypnosis to enhance treatment of both medical and psychological issues.

This book concerns the nature and character of conscious thinking from a philosophical perspective. One main aspect of conscious thinking addressed by the contributors is the phenomenal character involved in undergoing an episode of thinking or, in other words, the question of what it is like to think a certain thought, what has been called 'cognitive phenomenology'. This contested phenomenal character constitutes a form of phenomenal consciousness that needs clarification and further consideration within consciousness studies, cognitive psychology and philosophy. The present volume brings together chapters on the topic that contribute to clarify the notions and questions involved in the discussion, expanding the scope of the debate on cognitive phenomenology to other relevant aspects of conscious thinking and related domains. Several different topics are treated in the book, such as the relation of cognitive phenomenology with rationality, with the self, with attention or with the notion of cognitive access, as well as consideration of particular kinds of experiences of recognition and the so-called 'aha' experiences. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Philosophical Explorations.

In A Guide to the World of Dreams, Ole Vedfelt presents an in-depth look at dreams in psychotherapy, counselling and self-help, and offers an overview of current clinical knowledge and scientific research, including contemporary neuroscience. This book describes essential aspects of Jungian, psychoanalytic, existential, experiential and cognitive approaches to dreams and dreaming, and explores dreams in sleep laboratories, neuroscience and contemporary theories of dream cognition. Vedfelt clearly and effectively describes ten core qualities of dreams, and delineates a resource-oriented step-by-step manual for dreamwork at varying levels of expertise. For each core quality, key learning outcomes are clarified and resource-oriented, creative and motivating exercises for practical dreamwork are spelled out, providing clear and manageable methods. A Guide to the World of Dreams also introduces a new cybernetic theory of dreams as intelligent, unconscious information processing, and integrates contemporary clinical research into this theory. The book even includes a wealth of engaging examples from the author's lifelong practical experience with all levels and facets of dreamwork. Vedfelt's seminal work is essential reading for psychotherapists, psychologists, counsellors, and even psychiatrists, and could well be a fundamental textbook for courses at high schools, colleges, universities and even in adult-education classes. The book's transparent method and real-life examples will inspire individuals all over the world who seek self-help or self-development - any reader will be captivated to discover how knowledge of dreams stimulates creativity in everyday life and even in professional life.

BBC R4 Book of the Week 'Brilliant' Guardian 'Fascinating and often delightful' The Times What if intelligent life on Earth evolved not once, but twice? The octopus is the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien. What can we learn from the encounter? In Other Minds, Peter Godfrey-Smith, a distinguished philosopher of science and a skilled scuba diver, tells a bold new story of how nature became aware of itself - a story that largely occurs in the ocean, where animals first appeared. Tracking the mind's fitful development from unruly clumps of seaborne cells to the first evolved nervous systems in ancient relatives of jellyfish, he explores the incredible evolutionary journey of the cephalopods, which began as inconspicuous molluscs who would later abandon their shells to rise above the ocean floor, searching for prey and acquiring the greater intelligence needed to do so - a journey completely independent from the route that mammals and birds would later take. But what kind of intelligence do cephalopods possess? How did the octopus, a solitary creature with little social life, become so smart? What is it like to have eight tentacles that are so packed with neurons that they virtually 'think for themselves'? By tracing the question of inner life back to its roots and comparing human beings with our most remarkable animal relatives, Godfrey-Smith casts crucial new light on the octopus mind - and on our own.

This book is for professionals and general readers looking for ways to harness and focus their natural abilities to relax, ease pain, prepare for and recover from surgery, heal, overcome depression, and change themselves. The book includes inductions for sleep, anxiety and panic, weight loss, nonsmoking, recovering from illness, self-esteem, motivation, enhancing creativity, improving learning, healing the adult survivor of child abuse, natural childbirth, and loss and separation.

Time Line Therapy and the Basis of Personality is a compelling study of the important elements that make up a person's core personality, and a detailed exploration of - and introduction to - how Time Line therapy works in practice. Written by Tad James and Wyatt Woodsmall, Time Line Therapy and the Basis of Personality is a compelling study of the important elements that make up a person's core personality, and a detailed exploration of - and introduction to - how Time Line therapy works in practice. Utilizing discoveries made by Richard Bandler, Time Line Therapy and the Basis of Personality expands and updates our knowledge of how people actually store their memories, and sheds light on the effect that the system used for memory storage has on the individual. The authors contend that the concept of Time Line, or the notion of time that you have stored in your mind, shapes and structures your experience of the world, and therefore shapes your personality. Time Line therapy is therefore based on the premise that the client goes back to the first time they remember a particular problem, does change work - utilizing Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) to eliminate irritating behaviors or issues - and, if necessary, goes to subsequent times when their behavior or response was a problem, and undertakes further change work to resolve it. Written in an informative and engaging manner, Time Line Therapy and the Basis of Personality offers readers the opportunity to see how Time Line therapy works - providing a clear description of how to elicit the Time Line, and sharing step-by-step methods to subsequently help the client to release a limiting decision or trauma, remove anxiety, or set a future goal. All of these key aspects are explained using clear language and easy-to-follow steps, and the authors' expert commentary is further complemented by examples, exercises and transcripts in order to help the reader transfer the theory into effective practice. In Section I, the authors explain the NLP Communication Model and share their in-depth analysis of the filters - values, beliefs, attitudes, decisions, memories and meta programs - which we subconsciously use as we process the world around us and which form the basis of our personalities. Section II provides a comprehensive description of the Time Line and how it works: laying down a theoretical basis for the technique before offering insight into its practice and application with a demonstrative transcript of Time Line elicitation and change work in order to illustrate the concepts explored. In Section III the authors move on to carefully survey simple and complex meta programs (and how they can be changed) before exploring the formation, evolution and changing of values in Section IV, which includes a helpful exercise that gives guidance on how to elicit values from the client. Exploring many interesting contexts and how personality can be positively changed to help people live happier lives, Time Line Therapy and the Basis of Personality is a worthy addition to any therapist's or NLP practitioner's library and is suitable reading for anyone interested in behavioral change. Time Line Therapy and the Basis of Personality was originally published in 1988 by Meta Publications. Previously published as ISBN 978-091699021-3

Essays which state the fundamentals of Jung's psychological system: "On the Psychology of the Unconscious" and "The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious," with their original versions in an appendix.

This book encapsulates John Beebe's influential work on the analytical psychology of consciousness. Building on C. G. Jung's theory of psychological types and on subsequent clarifications by Marie-Louise von Franz and Isabel Briggs Myers, Beebe demonstrates the bond between the eight types of consciousness Jung named and the archetypal complexes that impart energy and purpose to our emotions, fantasies, and dreams. For this collection, Beebe has revised and updated his most influential and significant previously published papers and has introduced, in a brand new chapter, a surprising theory of type and culture. Beebe's model enables readers to take what they already know about psychological types and apply it to depth psychology. The insights contained in the fifteen chapters of this book will be especially valuable for Jungian psychotherapists, post-Jungian academics and scholars, psychological type practitioners, and type enthusiasts.

Did you know that intentional dreaming has been used to solve life's problems?

Embodiment: Creative imagination in medicine, art and travel sets out Robert Bosnak's practice of embodied imagination and demonstrates how he actually works with dreams and memories in groups. The book discusses various approaches to dreams, body and imagination, and combines this with a Jungian, neurobiological, relational and cultural analysis. The author's fascination with dreams, the most absolute form of embodied imagination, has caused him to travel all over the world. From his research he concludes that while dreaming everyone everywhere experiences dreams as embodied events in time and space while the dreamer is convinced of being awake; it is after waking into our specific cultural stories about dreaming that the widely differing attitudes towards dreams arise. By taking dreaming reality, not our waking interpretation of it, as the model for imagination, this book creates a paradigm shockand produces methods which can be applied in a wide variety of cultural settings.

Through detailed case studies, professionals and students will find thorough discussions of:

• ways to flashback into dreams and memories while in a hypnagogic state of consciousness
• the practice of embodied imagination and its profound physical effects
• psyche as a self-organizing multiplicity of selves
• the nature of subjectivity
• the body as a theatre of sense memories
• the limitation of reason
• the process of dissociation
• the treatment of trauma

This book discusses a variety of techniques which may be applied by health professionals to their patientsand clients. It will also be of particular interest to Jungian and relational psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and clinical psychologists, as well as to artists, actors, directors, writers and other individuals who wish to explore the creative imagination.

Within a technological context, this volume addresses contemporary theories of consciousness, subjective experience, the creation of meaning and emotion, and relationships between cognition and location. Its focus is both on and beyond the digital culture, seeking to assimilate new ideas emanating from the physical sciences as well as embracing spiritual and artistic aspects of human experience. Developing on the studies published in Roy Ascott's successful Reframing Consciousness, the book documents the very latest work from those connected with the internationally acclaimed CAiiA-STAR centre and its conferences. Their artistic and theoretical research in new media and art includes aspects of:

When Carl Jung and Carl Kerenyi got together to collaborate on this book, their aim was to elevate the study of mythology to a science. Kerenyi wrote on two of the most ubiquitous myths, the Divine Child and The Maiden, supporting the core 'stories' with both an introduction and a conclusion. Jung then provided a psychological analysis of both myths. He defined myth as a story about heroes interacting with the gods. Having long studied dreams and the subconscious, Jung identified certain dream patterns common to everyone. These 'archetypes' have developed through the centuries, and enable modern people to react to situations in much the same way as our ancestors. From nuclear annihilation to AIDS and Ebola, we continue to engage the gods in battle. Science of Mythology provides an account of the meaning and the purpose of mythic themes that is linked to modern life: the heroic battles between good and evil of yore are still played out, reflected in contemporary fears.

The first new volume of Dr. von Franz's legendary Zurich lectures to be published since 1980. Title #76 in the series Studies in Jungian Psychology by Jungian Analysts. Edited transcript of lectures presented at the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich. Features in-depth studies of six fairy tales -- one each from Denmark, Spain, China, France and Africa, and one from the Grimm Brother's collection -- with references to parallel themes in many others. Featuring the symbolic, non-linear approach von Franz is famous for, it offers unique insights into cross-cultural motifs, as well as being an invaluable resource for understanding dream images.

A guide to trusting in the wisdom of our nightly visions and describing how engaging with our dream world can give us a sense of direction, help us to heal current and past hurts, including pre-birth trauma. We can analyze and interpret our dreams, but we can do so much more: when we understand and engage with our dreams, we are able to tap into a special, deeper kind of healing. The process of healing is not about putting the same pieces back together; rather, it is about reclaiming what is already within us that could never be broken, the essence of who we are as individuals and as interconnected parts of a greater whole. In THE HEALING WISDOM OF DREAMS, health and wellness practitioner Kathleen Webster O'Malley gently guides us through the process of using our dreams to heal unwanted patterns and live more authentically. She provides specific tools for enhancing dream recall, including dream journaling, and brings in the practices of dream incubation--how to ask our dream a question and receive and interpret an answer--lucid dreaming, and Tibetan dream yoga practices. Nightmares are inevitable when we start to dive deeper into our vulnerabilities and traumas, and O'Malley discusses how to re-vision them as urgent messages that serve to deliver profound realizations. She explores the more mystical side of dreaming: visions from ancestors and spirit guides, animal guides, and archetypes that appear in our dreams. Finally, she encourages us to grant ourselves permission to be playful in our dreams, to envision ourselves as archeologists unearthing our hidden gifts.

In The Mindbrain and Dreams: An Exploration of Dreaming, Thinking, and Artistic Creation, Mark J. Blechner argues that the mind and brain should be understood as a single unit - the "mindbrain" - which manipulates our raw perceptions of the world and reshapes that world through dreams, thoughts, and artistic creation. This book explores how dreams are key to understanding mental processes, and how working with dreams clinically with individuals and groups provides an essential route towards achieving transformation within the psychoanalytic process. Covering such key topics as knowledge, emotion, metaphor, and memory, this book sets out a radical new agenda for understanding the importance of dreams in human thought and their clinical importance in psychoanalysis. Blechner builds on his previous work and takes it much further, drawing on the latest neuroscientific findings to set out a new way of how the mindbrain constructs reality, while providing guidance on how best to help people understand their dreams. The Mindbrain and Dreams: An Exploration of Dreaming, Thinking, and Artistic Creation will appeal to psychologists, psychoanalysts, philosophers, and cognitive neuroscientists who want new ways to explore how people think and understand the world.

An argument that consciousness, more widespread than previously assumed, is the feeling of being alive, not a type of computation or a clever hack.In The Feeling of Life Itself, Christof Koch offers a straightforward definition of consciousness as any subjective experience, from the most mundane to the most exalted--the feeling of being alive. Psychologists study which cognitive operations underpin a given conscious perception. Neuroscientists track the neural correlates of consciousness in the brain, the organ of the mind. But why the brain and not, say, the liver? How can the brain, three pounds of highly excitable matter, a piece of furniture in the universe, subject to the same laws of physics as any other piece, give rise to subjective experience? Koch argues that what is needed to answer these questions is a quantitative theory that starts with experience and proceeds to the brain. In The Feeling of Life Itself, Koch outlines such a theory, based on integrated information. Koch describes how the theory explains many facts about the neurology of consciousness and how it has been used to build a clinically useful consciousness meter. The theory predicts that many, and perhaps all, animals experience the sights and sounds of life; consciousness is much more widespread than conventionally assumed. Contrary to received wisdom, however, Koch argues that programmable computers will not have consciousness. Even a perfect software model of the brain is not conscious. Its simulation is fake consciousness. Consciousness is not a special type of computation--it is not a clever hack. Consciousness is about being.

What is it for you to be conscious? There is no agreement whatever in philosophy or science: it has remained a hard problem, a mystery. Is this partly or mainly owed to the existing theories not even having the same subject, not answering the same question? In Actual Consciousness, Ted Honderich sets out to supersede dualisms, objective physicalisms, abstract functionalism, externalisms, and other positions in the debate. He argues that the theory of Actualism, right or wrong, is unprecedented, in nine ways. (1) It begins from gathered data and proceeds to an adequate initial clarification of consciousness in the primary ordinary sense. This consciousness is summed up as something's being actual. (2) Like basic science, Actualism proceeds from this metaphorical or figurative beginning to what is wholly literal and explicit-constructed answers to the questions of what is actual and what it is for it to be actual. (3) In so doing, the theory respects the differences of consciousness within perception, consciousness that is thinking in a generic sense, and consciousness that is generic wanting. (4) What is actual with your perceptual consciousness is a subjective physical world out there, very likely a room, differently real from the objective physical world, that other division of the physical world. (5) What it is for the myriad subjective physical worlds to be actual is for them to be subjectively physical, which is exhaustively characterized. (6) What is actual with cognitive and affective consciousness is affirmed or valued representations. The representations being actual, which is essential to their nature, is their being differently subjectively physical from the subjective physical worlds. (7) Actualism, naturally enough when you think of it, but unlike any other existing general theory of consciousness, is thus externalist with perceptual consciousness but internalist with respect to cognitive and affective consciousness. (8) It satisfies rigorous criteria got from examination of the failures of the existing theories. In particular, it explains the role of subjectivity in thinking about consciousness, including a special subjectivity that is individuality. (9) Philosophers and scientists have regularly said that thinking about consciousness requires just giving up the old stuff and starting again. Actualism does this. Science is served by this main line philosophy, which is concentration on the logic of ordinary intelligence-clarity, consistency and validity, completeness, generality.