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.

More than any other individual, Milton Erickson has been responsible for shaping the modern view of hypnosis. His great contribution came from his ability to locate an individual's innter resources for coping creativley with the real problems of everyday life. Erickson himself endured two bouts of polio and was in a wheelchair throughout much of his later life. He learned to use the healing methods of self-hypnosis to deal with his handicaps and uncover ways of experiencing living at more profound levels. His delight in teaching these methdos of self-healing are clearly shown in these transcriptions of his seminars, workshops and lectures. Volume III contains much of the source material wherein Erickson first expressed his original views on psychosomatic medicine and healing. Here we learn hwo the languages of the mind communicate with the languages of the body. His research validates the view that psyche, mind, and brain are pervasively integrated in modulating body processes in health and illness. The 'miracle cures', spontaneous remissions of lethal diseases, and placebo effects, which seemed inexplicable to the scientific mind until recently, can how be understood as manifestations of mind-body information systems that extend far beyond the limitations formerly placed on the central nervous system.

'Wonderful' Philosophy Now __________________________ When a computer goes wrong, we are told to turn it off and on again. In Am I Dreaming?, science journalist James Kingsland reveals how the human brain is remarkably similar. By rebooting our hard-wired patterns of thinking - through so-called 'altered states of consciousness' - we can gain new perspectives on ourselves and the world around us. From shamans in Peru to tech workers in Silicon Valley, Kingsland takes us on a dazzling tour of lucid dreams, mindfulness, hypnotic trances, virtual reality and drug-induced hallucinations. A startling exploration of perception and consciousness, this is also a provocative argument for using altered states to boost our mental health. 'Read this book and take part in one of the greatest intellectual adventures of all time.'Professor J. Allan Hobson

Albert Hofmann, who died in 2008 aged 102, first synthesized lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) in 1938, but the results of animal tests were so unremarkable that the chemical was abandoned. Driven by intuition, he synthesized it again in 1943, and serendipitously noticed its profound effects on himself. Although his work produced other important drugs, including methergine, hydergine and dihydroergotamine, it was LSD that shaped his career. After his discovery of LSD's properties, Hofmann spent years researching sacred plants. He succeeded in isolating and synthesizing the active compounds in the Psilocybe mexicana mushroom, which he named psilocybin and psilocin. During the 60s, Hofmann struck up friendships with personalities such as Aldous Huxley, Gordon Wasson, and Timothy Leary. He continued to work at Sandoz until 1971 when he retired as Director of Research for the Department of Natural Products. He subsequently served as a member of the Nobel Prize Committee, and was nominated by Time magazine as one of the most influential figures of the 20th century. In 2007, Albert Hofmann asked Amanda Feilding if she could publish his Problem Child, and shortly before his death he approved a new and updated translation of his autobiography (first published by McGraw Hill in 1979). It appears here for the first time in print.

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.

In Ten Trips neuropsychologist Andy Mitchell takes ten different psychedelic drugs in ten different settings, puncturing the hype while providing the fullest picture yet of their limitlessly fascinating possibilities. Once demonised and still largely illegal, psychedelic drugs are now officially a 'breakthrough therapy', used to treat depression, trauma and addiction and to enhance well-being. But as neuropsychologist Andy Mitchell shows in this deeply serious yet wildly entertaining investigation, this approach misses what is so strange and valuable about them: the psychedelic experience itself. In Ten Trips he takes ten different compounds, some famous, others obscure, journeying from a neuroimaging lab in London to the Colombian Amazon via Silicon Valley and his friend's basement kitchen. His encounters with scientists and gangsters, venture capitalists and con-men, psychonauts and shamans provide a panoramic view of psychedelics today: their capacity for healing but also trauma, for transcendence and corruption, profundity and hilarity. By removing psychedelics from their indigenous and underground cultures, we risk losing the very things we need to harness them. To make them safe or normal might ultimately destroy what makes them potent. That potential is indeed great, not as an antidote to mental illness - none exists - but as a way of changing our whole perspective on mental health and flourishing. Ten Trips is a dazzling, perception-shifting odyssey that shows how psychedelics can re-enchant us with the world.

One hundred years ago Sigmund Freud published The Interpretations of Dreams, a book that, like Darwin's The Origin of Species, revolutionized our understanding of human nature. Now this groundbreaking new translation--the first to be based on the original text published in November 1899--brings us a more readable, more accurate, and more coherent picture of Freud's masterpiece.
The first edition of The Interpretation of Dreams is much shorter than its subsequent editions; each time the text was reissued, from 1909 onwards, Freud added to it. The most significant, and in many ways the most unfortunate addition, is a 50-page section devoted to the kind of mechanical reading of dream symbolism--long objects equal male genitalia, etc.--that has gained popular currency and partially obscured Freud's more profound insights into dreams. In the original version presented here, Freud's emphasis falls more clearly on the use of words in dreams and on the difficulty of deciphering them. Without the strata of later additions, readers will find here a clearer development of Freud's central ideas--of dream as wish-fulfillment, of the dream's manifest and latent content, of the retelling of dreams as a continuation of the dreamwork, and much more. Joyce Crick's translation is lighter and faster-moving than previous versions, enhancing the sense of dialogue with the reader, one of Freud's stylistic strengths, and allowing us to follow Freud's theory as it evolved through difficult cases, apparently intractable counter-examples, and fascinating analyses of Freud's own dreams.
The restoration of Freud's classic is a major event, giving us in a sense a new work by one of this century' most startling, original, and influential thinkers.
About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

What constitutes enjoyment of life? Optimal Experience: Psychological Studies of Flow in Consciousness offers a comprehensive survey of theoretical and empirical investigations of the "flow" experience, a desirable or optimal state of consciousness that enhances a person's psychic state. "Flow" can be said to occur when people are able to meet the challenges of their environment with appropriate skills, and accordingly feel a sense of well-being, a sense of mastery, and a heightened sense of self-esteem. The authors show the diverse contexts and circumstances in which flow is reported in different cultures (e.g. Japan, Korea, Australia, Italy), and describe its positive emotional impacts. They reflect on the concept of flow vis-à-vis modern social structures, historical phenomena, and evolutionary biocultural selection. The ways in which the ability to experience flow affects work satisfaction, academic success, and the overall quality of life are suggested; and the childrearing practices that result in the ability to derive enjoyment from life, considered.

Of all the books of the Bible few have had more resonance for modern readers than the Book of Job. For a world that has witnessed great horrors, Job's cries of despair and incomprehension are all too recognizable. The visionary psychotherapist Carl Gustav Jung understood this and responded with this remarkable book, in which he set himself face-to-face with 'the unvarnished spectacle of divine savagery and ruthlessness'. Jung perceived in the hidden recesses of the human psyche the cause of a crisis that plagues modern humanity and leaves the individual, like Job, isolated and bewildered in the face of impenetrable fortune. By correlating the transcendental with the unconscious, Jung, writing not as a biblical scholar but 'as a layman and physician who has been privileged to see deeply into the psychic life of many people', offers a way for every reader to come to terms with the divine darkness which confronts each individual.

Table of Contents

Introduction; Chapter 1 I; Chapter 2 II; Chapter 3 III; Chapter 4 IV; Chapter 5 V; Chapter 6 VI; Chapter 7 VII; Chapter 8 VIII; Chapter 9 IX; Chapter 10 X; Chapter 11 XI; Chapter 12 XII; Chapter 13 XIII; Chapter 14 XIV; Chapter 15 XV; Chapter 16 XVI; Chapter 17 XVII; Chapter 18 XVIII; Chapter 19 XIX; Chapter 20 XX;