Psychoanalytic Approaches to Myth: Freud and the Freudians (Theorists of Myth)

This book surveys the history of psychoanalytic treatments of myths variously as symptoms of psychopathology, as cultural defense mechanisms, and as metaphoric expressions of ideas that may include therapeutic insights.

Psychoanalytic Approaches to Myth (Theorists of Myth)

Merkur, Daniel

Religion & Spirituality

Routledge

Presents the first comprehensive survey of the varieties of psychedelic experience since 1975. The Ecstatic Imagination provides the first general theory of psychedelic experiences. Merkur refutes several theories that have been used to explain single categories of psychedelic experience, and offers instead a unitary theory that is applicable to all varieties. The book treats self-reports of psychedelic experiences as a wealth of neglected data which forms the basis to expand the psychoanalytic model of human imagination. An exhaustive phenomenology of the varieties of LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin experiences in Western and Native American cultures is joined together with psychoanalytic theories drawn from the classical, ego psychological, and object relations schools. Where existing theories prove inadequate to the discussion of data, original formulations are offered. The result is a rigorously psychoanalytic approach to the process of self-actualization.

The Ecstatic Imagination: Psychedelic Experiences and the Psychoanalysis of

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Psychology & Counseling

State University of New York Press

Provides an alternative to the traditional psychoanalytic explanation of mystical experience by viewing unitive thinking as a line of cognitive development and mystical moments as creative inspirations on unitive ideas. Merkur proposes an alternative to the traditional psychoanalytic explanation of mystical experiences as regression to the solipsism of earliest infancy. He does this by viewing unitive thinking as a line of cognitive development, and mystical moments as creative inspirations on unitive topics. Utilizing classical self-reports by Christian, Jewish, and Muslim mystics, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, and modern Western peak experiences, Merkur argues that experiences of mystical union are manifestations of a broader category of psychological processes that manifest in scientific and moral thought, as well as in mysticism. Unconscious as well as conscious, unitive thinking is sometimes realistic and sometimes fantastic, in patterns that are consistent with cognitive development in general. Mystical moments of unitive thinking may be considered moments of creative inspiration that happen to make use of unitive ideas. Building on the psychoanalytic object-relations theory that the self is always in relationship with an object, Merkur argues that the solipsism of some varieties of mystical union always implies unconscious ideas of a love object who is transcendent.

Mystical Moments and Unitive Thinking

State Univ of New York Pr

First Published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor &amp; Francis, an informa company.

Becoming Half Hidden: Shamanism and Initiation Among the Inuit (Garland Reference Library of the Humanities)

Reference

Arts & Photography

Powers Which We Do Not Know: The Gods and Spirits of the Inuit

Powers which we do not know: The gods and spirits of the Inuit

University of Idaho Press

Merkur's study is the first general comparative synthesis in over half a century of the traditional religions of the Inuit.

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Univ of Idaho Pr

Psychoanalytic Approaches to Myth Freud and the Freudians

First Published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Becoming Half Hidden: Shamanism and Initiation Among the Inuit

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Books by Merkur, Daniel