Recommendations based on "Meditations on the Soul: Selected Letters of Marsilio Ficino"

The Roman statesman and philosopher Seneca (4 BCE–65 CE) recorded his moral philosophy and reflections on life as a highly original kind of correspondence. Letters on Ethics includes vivid descriptions of town and country life in Nero’s Italy, discussions of poetry and oratory, and philosophical training for Seneca’s friend Lucilius. This volume, the first complete English translation in nearly a century, makes the Letters more accessible than ever before.Written as much for a general audience as for Lucilius, these engaging letters offer advice on how to deal with everything from nosy neighbors to sickness, pain, and death. Seneca uses the informal format of the letter to present the central ideas of Stoicism, for centuries the most influential philosophical system in the Mediterranean world. His lively and at times humorous expositions have made the Letters his most popular work and an enduring classic. Including an introduction and explanatory notes by Margaret Graver and A. A. Long, this authoritative edition will captivate a new generation of readers.

Donald Kalsched explores the interior world of dream and fantasy images encountered in therapy with people who have suffered unbearable life experiences. He shows how, in an ironical twist of psychical life, the very images which are generated to defend the self can become malevolent and destructive, resulting in further trauma for the person. Why and how this happens are the questions the book sets out to answer.Drawing on detailed clinical material, the author gives special attention to the problems of addiction and psychosomatic disorder, as well as the broad topic of dissociation and its treatment. By focusing on the archaic and primitive defenses of the self he connects Jungian theory and practice with contemporary object relations theory and dissociation theory. At the same time, he shows how a Jungian understanding of the universal images of myth and folklore can illuminate treatment of the traumatised patient.Trauma is about the rupture of those developmental transitions that make life worth living. Donald Kalsched sees this as a spiritual problem as well as a psychological one and in The Inner World of Trauma he provides a compelling insight into how an inner self-care system tries to save the personal spirit.

This groundbreaking classic explores the necessity of connections between our life and soul and developing the main lines of the soul-making process.

Written three years before his death, The Undiscovered Self combines acuity with concision in masterly fashion and is Jung at his very best. Offering clear and crisp insights into some of his major theories, such as the duality of human nature, the unconscious, human instinct and spirituality, Jung warns against the threats of totalitarianism and political and social propaganda to the free-thinking individual. As timely now as when it was first written, Jung's vision is a salutary reminder of why we should not become passive members of the herd.With a new foreword by Sonu Shamdasani.

Featuring a new introduction by Casey Nelson Blake, this classic text provides the essence of Mumford's views on the distinct yet interpenetrating roles of technology and the arts in modern culture. Mumford contends that modern man's overemphasis on technics has contributed to the depersonalization and emptiness of much of twentieth-century life. He issues a call for a renewed respect for artistic impulses and achievements. His repeated insistence that technological development take the Human as its measure -- as well as his impassioned plea for humanity to make the most of its "splendid potentialities and promise" and reverse its progress toward anomie and destruction -- is ever more relevant as the new century dawns.

From Kirkus Reviews ( Jolande Jacobi first met Carl Jung on a social occasion when she was thirty-eight; she then experienced a dream which she described to him, and he replied, ""Now you are caught, now you can't get away."" Dr. Jacobi's studies had been curtailed by marriage at nineteen; Jung insisted that she get her doctorate even though she was physically in danger in pre-World War II Vienna--a danger that became imminent for her husband and sons in Hungary, but saw her to safety in Switzerland, where her life today has, according to David Holt, an ""extraordinarily vivid quality, wounded yet inviolate."" This exposition of Jung's concept of individuation has importance, she feels, for present survival and for shaping the it deals with social, ethical, and religious problems through a growing self-awareness of the individual and society. The ""individuation process"" can be experienced in natural (occurring almost autonomously) or artificial form (aided for instance by analysis, developed by definite methods, and consciously experienced). Dr. Jacobi describes the two main phases of the transformation with the ""change of dominance"" in the second half; the stages of individuation; the relation of ego and Self; the finding of the ""individual way"" (what is needed is a vocation); conscious realization, the religious factor. A lucid presentation of a major if not dominant theorist which will appeal to a special, predisposed audience.

In 'The Decay of Lying' Oscar Wilde uses his decadent ideology in an attempt to reverse and therefore reject his audiences' 'normal' conceptualizations of nature, art and morality. Wilde's views of life and art are illustrated through the use of Platonic dialogue where the character Vivian takes on the persona of Wilde. Wilde's goal is to subvert the norm by reversing its values. Wilde suggests to us that society is wrong, not him. Calling on diverse examples - from Ancient Greek sculpture to contemporary paintings - Oscar Wilde's brilliant essay creates a witty, paradoxical world in which the only Art worth loving is that built on complete untruths.

Traces the evolution of the Romantic approach to literary criticism and compares it to the other methods which prevailed in the early nineteenth century.

A major new work by the philosopher and feminist thinker Adriana Cavarero, this is a fascinating and challenging account of the relationship between the structure of the self and the structure of narrative.

In this, his most famous and influential work, Carl Jung made a dramatic break from the psychoanalytic tradition established by his mentor, Sigmund Freud. Rather than focusing on psychopathology and its symptoms, the Swiss psychiatrist studied dreams, mythology, and literature to define the universal patterns of the psyche.In Psychology of the Unconscious, Jung seeks a symbolic meaning and purpose behind a given set of symptoms, placing them within the larger context of the psyche. The 1912 text examines the fantasies of a patient whose poetic and vivid mental images helped Jung redefine libido as psychic energy, arising from the unconscious and manifesting itself consciously in symbolic form. Jung's commentary on his patient's fantasies offers a complex study of symbolic psychiatry and foreshadows his development of the theory of collective unconscious and its constituents, the archetypes.The author's role in the development of analytical psychology, a therapeutic process that promotes creativity and psychological development, makes this landmark in psychoanalytic methodology required reading for students and others interested in the practice and process of psychology.