Supporting three wives, twelve children, and assorted relatives, Mohan Rai is a thoroughly modern man, convinced he's escaped an outmoded duty to follow his father as shaman to his Bhutanese village. But the gods and spirits, ancient protectors of the tribe, have other ideas.

Dishonored and vengeful, they enter his dreams and haunt his days, destroying his business, his health, his sanity, and finally, his freedom.

Based on Mohan's letters from prison, this true account by his first Western initiate will transform your worldview.

"Ellen's retelling of Mohan Rai's first-hand account of his shamanic apprenticeship in Bhutan is a valuable contribution to the preservation of this ancient knowledge." ―Michael Harner, Ph.D., author, "The Way of the Shaman and Founder, Foundation for Shamanic Studies"

"I was fascinated. Like "Autobiography of a Yogi," Mohan Rai's story shares much wisdom. Portraying his training from childhood in the ancient, mystical traditions of the shaman, this book brings a hopeful vision I will carry into my everyday life forever...a reminder of the mysteries that sustain our lives and how little we know of them. The message runs deep." ―Hal Zina Bennett, Ph.D., author, "Spirit Animals and the Wheel of Life: Earth-Centered Practices for Everyday Living"

Research on the development of metaphor abilities in children can be dated back as far as 1960, with Asch and Nerlove's pioneering study, which concluded that children were unable to understand metaphors until middle or even late childhood. However, the study of metaphor in children did not take off until the 1970s; research continued to show metaphor as a relatively late-developing skill, based on children's inability to paraphrase correctly metaphoric sentences presented out of any situational or narrative context.
In the past decade, research into the development of figurative language has broadened considerably in scope. Efforts have been underway to demonstrate the cognitive underpinnings of the ability to make sense of figurative language and to demonstrate the role of metaphor and its cousin, analogy, in the development of cognition.
Metaphor is now considered to be a central aspect of language and thought and thus a crucial variable in cognitive development. The articles in this issue support the claim that no longer can any theory of language acquisition afford to ignore how children are able to recognize the distinction between what is said and what is meant and how they are able to grasp what is meant when people say things they do not mean.

Research on the development of metaphor abilities in children can be dated back as far as 1960, with Asch and Nerlove's pioneering study, which concluded that children were unable to understand metaphors until middle or even late childhood. However, the study of metaphor in children did not take off until the 1970s; research continued to show metaphor as a relatively late-developing skill, based on children's inability to paraphrase correctly metaphoric sentences presented out of any situational or narrative context. In the past decade, research into the development of figurative language has broadened considerably in scope. Efforts have been underway to demonstrate the cognitive underpinnings of the ability to make sense of figurative language and to demonstrate the role of metaphor and its cousin, analogy, in the development of cognition. Metaphor is now considered to be a central aspect of language and thought and thus a crucial variable in cognitive development. The articles in this issue support the claim that no longer can any theory of language acquisition afford to ignore how children are able to recognize the distinction between what is said and what is meant and how they are able to grasp what is meant when people say things they do not mean.

This Element focuses on the development of drawing (and painting) in childhood. The author begins by examining children's representational drawing, a topic that has received quite wide attention from the nineteenth century on. The author then turns to issues that have received far less attention and discusses the aesthetic property of expression, weighing the claim that young children's highly expressive drawings bear an affinity to twentieth century modernist art. The author then examines the function of drawing for children's emotional development. Next, looking at art prodigies, the author turns to the how of drawing, considering the relation of drawing talent to IQ and to visual-spatial skills. Finally, the author considers the relation between development and education in art and how educators can best nurture children's artistic development.

An Uneasy Guest in the Schoolhouse recounts how art education has been conceptualized, taught, and advocated for in the United States in the face of its persistent marginalization in the education system. Tracing various rationales offered from the 19th century onward, Winner argues that art education has failed to be justified as a good in and of itself-and this failure has affected both the status of visual art education in our schools and the quality of its teaching. Winner's comprehensive book maps recurrent pendulum swings between "traditional" and "progressive" approaches to art education in the United States, supplemented by her firsthand experiences observing art teaching in schools in China and Italy. Despite this problematic and uncertain past, 21st century art education in the United States and abroad has exploded with a wealth of new ideas aligned with the progressivism of the early 20th century and informed by the practices of contemporary art. As Winner details, an understanding of the history of art education, along with a focus on current challenges and opportunities, is essential for arts researchers, educators, and advocates, as well as anyone in the general public who cares about quality education in the 21st century.

There is no end of talk and of wondering about 'art' and 'the arts.' This book examines a number of questions about the arts (broadly defined to include all of the arts). Some of these questions come from philosophy. Examples include: * What makes something art? * Can anything be art? * Do we experience "real" emotions from the arts? * Why do we seek out and even cherish sorrow and fear from art when we go out of our way to avoid these very emotions in real life? * How do we decide what is good art? Do aesthetic judgments have any objective truth value? * Why do we devalue fakes even if we - indeed, even the experts-- can't tell them apart from originals? * Does fiction enhance our empathy and understanding of others? Is art-making therapeutic? Others are "common sense" questions that laypersons wonder about. Examples include: * Does learning to play music raise a child's IQ? * Is modern art something my kid could do? * Is talent a matter of nature or nurture? This book examines puzzles about the arts wherever their provenance - as long as there is empirical research using the methods of social science (interviews, experimentation, data collection, statistical analysis) that can shed light on these questions. The examined research reveals how ordinary people think about these questions, and why they think the way they do - an inquiry referred to as intuitive aesthetics. The book shows how psychological research on the arts has shed light on and often offered surprising answers to such questions.

Supporting three wives, twelve children, and assorted relatives, Mohan Rai is a thoroughly modern man, convinced he's escaped an outmoded duty to follow his father as shaman to his Bhutanese village. But the gods and spirits, ancient protectors of the tribe, have other ideas. Dishonored and vengeful, they enter his dreams and haunt his days, destroying his business, his health, his sanity, and finally, his freedom. Based on Mohan's letters from prison, this true account by his first Western initiate will transform your worldview. "Ellen's retelling of Mohan Rai's first-hand account of his shamanic apprenticeship in Bhutan is a valuable contribution to the preservation of this ancient knowledge." -- Michael Harner, Ph.D., author, The Way of the Shaman, and Founder, Foundation for Shamanic Studies. "I was fascinated. Like Autobiography of a Yogi, Mohan Rai's story shares much wisdom. Portraying his training from childhood in the ancient, mystical traditions of the shaman, this book brings a hopeful vision I will carry into my everyday life forever...a reminder of the mysteries that sustain our lives and how little we know." -- Hal Zina Bennett, Ph.D., author, Spirit Animals and the Wheel of Life; Earth-Centered Practices for Everyday Living. Ellen Winner is an initiate into the Himalayan Rai and Tamang shamanic traditions, a Foundation for Shamanic Studies Three-year graduate, and a Harner Method certified shamanic counselor. At her day job she is a patent attorney. She lives with her husband, Joe O'Laughlin, in Boulder, Colorado.

The skeptical child of scientists, Ellen decides early on there is no God. In her teens she has a vision of One Consciousness, and after thinking about it long and hard, concludes that she must be that One-and therefore to blame for all the suffering world. She tries to act normal as a wife and working mother, but leaps at the chance to study with tribal shamans in Nepal, learning their secrets and states of ecstacy-in vain. Only when she faces her own powerlessness does she finally discover the miraculous secret of reality.

Supporting three wives, twelve children, and assorted relatives, Mohan Rai is a thoroughly modern man, convinced he's escaped an outmoded duty to follow his father as shaman to his Bhutanese village. But the gods and spirits, ancient protectors of the tribe, have other ideas.

Dishonored and vengeful, they enter his dreams and haunt his days, destroying his business, his health, his sanity, and finally, his freedom.

Based on Mohan's letters from prison, this true account by his first Western initiate will transform your worldview.

"Ellen's retelling of Mohan Rai's first-hand account of his shamanic apprenticeship in Bhutan is a valuable contribution to the preservation of this ancient knowledge." ―Michael Harner, Ph.D., author, "The Way of the Shaman and Founder, Foundation for Shamanic Studies"

"I was fascinated. Like "Autobiography of a Yogi," Mohan Rai's story shares much wisdom. Portraying his training from childhood in the ancient, mystical traditions of the shaman, this book brings a hopeful vision I will carry into my everyday life forever...a reminder of the mysteries that sustain our lives and how little we know of them. The message runs deep." ―Hal Zina Bennett, Ph.D., author, "Spirit Animals and the Wheel of Life: Earth-Centered Practices for Everyday Living"

A small child looks at a dripping faucet and says that it is drooling." Another calls a centipede a "comb." An older child notices the mess in his younger brother's room and says, "Wow, it sure is neat in here." Children's spontaneous speech is rich in such creative, nonliteral discourse. How do children's abilities to use and interpret figurative language change as they grow older? What does such language show us about the changing features of children's minds?

In this absorbing book, psychologist Ellen Winner examines the development of the child's ability to use and understand metaphor and irony. These, she argues, are the two major forms of figurative language and are, moreover, complementary. Metaphor, which describes and sometimes explains, highlights attributes of a topic. As such, it serves primarily a cognitive function. Irony highlights the speaker's attitude toward the subject arid presupposes an appreciation of that attitude by the listener. In contrast to metaphor, irony serves primarily a social function. Winner looks in detail at the ways these forms of language differ structurally and at the cognitive and social capacities required for each.

The book not only draws on the author's own empirical studies but also offers a valuable synthesis of research in the area: it is the first account that spans the realm of figurative language. Winner writes clearly and engagingly and enlivens her account with many vivid examples from children's speech. The book will appeal to developmental psychologists, educators, psychologists of language, early-language specialists, students of literature, indeed, anyone who is delighted by the fanciful utterances of young children.

In this fascinating book, Ellen Winner uncovers and explores nine myths about giftedness, and shows us what gifted children are really like.Using vivid case studies, Winner paints a complex picture of the gifted child. Here we meet David, a three-year-old who learned to read in two weeks KyLee, a five-year-old who mastered on his own all of the math concepts expected by the end of elementary school and Nadia, an autistic and retarded savant" who nevertheless could draw like a Renaissance master.Winner uses her research with these and several other extraordinary children, as well as the latest biological and psychological evidence, to debunk the many myths about academic, musical, and artistic giftedness. Gifted Children also looks at the role played by schools in fostering exceptional abilities. Winner castigates schools for wasting resources on weak educational programs for the moderately gifted. Instead, she advocates elevating standards for all children, and focusing our resources for gifted education on those with extreme abilities,children who are left untouched by the kinds of minimal programs we have today.

Cave paintings of our prehistoric ancestors, elaborate ritual dances of preliterate tribesmen, long lines at the movies, earnest scribbles of the three-year-old next door--evidence of human preoccupation with art is everywhere, and it is overwhelming. But unlike other human universals--language, tool use, the family--art makes no material contribution to mankind's survival. What impels the artist to the lonely effort at self-expression? What moves the audience to resonate to the work of a master? What accounts for the child's inherent fascination with pictures and stories and songs?

These questions are among the deepest we can ask about human nature. Freud deemed some of them forever unanswerable, but modern psychology has made new inroads into these old mysteries. "Invented Worlds" provides a complete, authoritative account of this progress. Dealing with the three major art forms--painting, music, and literature--Ellen Winner shows how the artist fashions a symbolic world that transforms the experience of the observer. She probes the adult's ability to create and respond to works of art. In addition, she examines children's art for what it can reveal about the artistic impulse before adult convention becomes a shaping force. Finally, in order to reach a better understanding of the biological bases of artistry, Winner discusses the art of the mentally disturbed and the neurologically impaired patient.

The sum of these discussions is more than an up-to-date handbook to the field; it is nothing less than a new synthesis of our understanding of man's artistic nature. Written with admirable clarity, "Invented Worlds" is a book that can be used by professionals and students in psychology, education, and the arts, as well as anyone with reason to be curious about the processes that underlie the creation and enjoyment of art.