Book Description

Brilliant, perceptive work by founder of psychoanalysis remains one of the essential studies of the psychology of wit and jokes. Freud analyzes wit, probes its origins in the "pleasure mechanism," demonstrates parallels of wit to neuroses, dreams and psychopathological acts. Replete with jokes and witticisms, this is one of the great analyst’s most accessible, enjoyable works. Translated by A. A. Brill.
... Read more

Reviews (1)

As brilliant as his "The Interpretation of Dreams".
Found Freud in your search? You are no amateur or you are a real explorer of unkown lands. Even a beginner with Freud can enjoy this brilliant analysis of the fun behind wit and jokes. Don't think knowing why things are funny will reduce your pleasure in them....far from it, you will understand yourself and others better, you will find added sparkle in wit and discover the land mines hidden in the tall grass of laughter. Though not for the linguistically challenged, Freud richly rewards the determined reader. Take him on ... Read more

Book Description

As an associate of C. G. Jung for many years, Jolande Jacobi is in a unique position to provide an interpretation of his work. In this volume, Dr. Jacobi presents a study of three central, interrelated concepts in analytical psychology: the individual complex, the universal archetype, and the dynamic symbol. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Introductory Analytical Psychology
From the foreword by C. G. Jung (1956): "The problem this book is concerned with is one in which I, too, have been interested for a long time. It is now exactly fifty years since I learned, thanks to the association experiment, the role which complexes play in our conscious life . . . Dr. Jacobi has made it her task, in this book, to expound the important connection on the one hand between the individual complex and the universal, instinctual archetype, and on the other hand between this and the symbol. The appearance of her study is the more welcome to me in that the concept of the archetype has given rise to the greatest misunderstandings and -- if one may judge by the adverse criticisms -- must be presumed to be very difficult to comprehend. Anyone, therefore, who has misgivings on this score can seek information in this volume, which also takes account of much of the literature."

readable intro to Jung's thought
Textbook Jung made clear by the woman who gave Robert Moore such a bad time at the Jung Institute. Recommended for beginners just venturing into Jung's thought. Don't expect anything innovative.

Great book, very illustrative of Jung's work
It is very interesting and accessible, even for the ones not familiar with Jung's theories. It is a good introduction that makes you wanting to know more about C.G. Jung. ... Read more

Book Description

". . . deserves wide readership by both developmentalists and nondevelopmentalists who need an overview of the state of the art. Clearly and comprehensively, Karmiloff-Smith shows the highly structured ways in which different representational processes emerge from infancy onwards." -- Andrew Whiten, Nature

Taking a stand midway between Piaget's constructivism and Fodor's nativism, Annette Karmiloff-Smith offers an exciting new theory of developmental change that embraces both approaches, showing how both are necessary to a fundamental theory of human cognition. Karmiloff-Smith shifts the focus from what cognitive science can offer the study of development to what a developmental perspective can offer cognitive science, presenting a coherent portrait of the flexibility and creativity of the human mind as it develops from infancy to middle childhood. 1995 British Psychological Society Book Award A Bradford Book. Learning, Development, and Conceptual Change series ... Read more

Reviews (2)

A model for child's cognitive development
Cognitive development has been the issue of research and debate for years.Many theories have been proposed in order to effectively describe and explain cognitive development.Two of those theories are Fodor's nativism and Piaget's constructivism.

In the specific book, Annette Karmiloff-Smith, a student of Piaget, is proposing a model of child cognitive development.The author's effort is concentrated on connecting Fodor's nativism (existance of modules,predispostitions in a neonate's mind) and Piaget's theory of constructivism (all aspects of knowledge are part of a domain-general cognitive development and occur during the interaction with the environment).

Karmiloff-Smith supports the existance of innately specified attention biases and predispositions of the human mind which develop through a sequence of subsequent changes.

According to Karmiloff-Smith the child must be born with a set of pre-wired modules that account a variety of cognitive skills.Unlike Fodor, Karmiloff-Smith supports that during development the modules start interacting and working together. Initially, children learn by instinct, or at least "implicitly". Then their thinking develops, and consists of redescribing the world from an implicit form to more and more explicit forms, to more and more verbal knowledge.

The author's model contains a key-idea called "representational redescription".Representational redescription occurs through three stages: first the child learns to become a master of some activity (phase 1); then she analyzes introspectively what she has learned (phase 2); and, finally, she reconciles her performance with her introspection (phase 3). This process involves re-coding information from one representational format to another.The same "redescription" process operates within each module, but not necessarily at the same pace. In each domain, children acquire domain-specific principles that augment the general-purpose principles (such as representational redescription) that guide their cognitive life. Finally, mapping across domains and the innate predespositions is a fundamental achievement by the child's mind.

The book consists of five chapters which describe how cognitive development occurs in five different spheres of mental activity. Karmiloff shows how children start with innate dispositions for language, achieve linguistic mastery and then develop metalinguistic knowledge through representational redescription. Analogously, the child masters the physical objects and later develops a naive Physics of her own (a theory of object behavior). Same applies to Mathematics and to Psychology (children develop a theory of mind that explains the behavior ofother individuals).

The main idea of this book lies in the fact that to account for development it is necessary to invoke an integration of aspects of nativism and constructivism, along with a cognitive architecture that enables representational redescription.

A model for child's cognitive development
Cognitive development has been the issue of research and debate for years.Many theories have been proposed in order to effectively describe and explain cognitive development.Two of those theories are Fodor's nativism and Piaget's constructivism.

In the specific book, Annette Karmiloff-Smith, a student of Piaget, is proposing a model of child cognitive development.The author's effort is concentrated on connecting Fodor's nativism (existance of modules,predispostitions in a neonate's mind) and Piaget's theory of constructivism (all aspects of knowledge are part of a domain-general cognitive development and occur during the interaction with the environment).

Karmiloff-Smith supports the existance of innately specified attention biases and predispositions of the human mind which develop through a sequence of subsequent changes.

According to Karmiloff-Smith the child must be born with a set of pre-wired modules that account a variety of cognitive skills.Unlike Fodor, Karmiloff-Smith supports that during development the modules start interacting and working together. Initially, children learn by instinct, or at least "implicitly". Then their thinking develops, and consists of redescribing the world from an implicit form to more and more explicit forms, to more and more verbal knowledge.

The author's model contains a key-idea called "representational redescription".Representational redescription occurs through three stages: first the child learns to become a master of some activity (phase 1); then she analyzes introspectively what she has learned (phase 2); and, finally, she reconciles her performance with her introspection (phase 3). This process involves re-coding information from one representational format to another.The same "redescription" process operates within each module, but not necessarily at the same pace. In each domain, children acquire domain-specific principles that augment the general-purpose principles (such as representational redescription) that guide their cognitive life. Finally, mapping across domains and the innate predespositions is a fundamental achievement by the child's mind.

The book consists of five chapters which describe how cognitive development occurs in five different spheres of mental activity. Karmiloff shows how children start with innate dispositions for language, achieve linguistic mastery and then develop metalinguistic knowledge through representational redescription. Analogously, the child masters the physical objects and later develops a naive Physics of her own (a theory of object behavior). Same applies to Mathematics and to Psychology (children develop a theory of mind that explains the behavior ofother individuals).

The main idea of this book lies in the fact that to account for development it is necessary to invoke an integration of aspects of nativism and constructivism, along with a cognitive architecture that enables representational redescription. ... Read more

Book Description

How do creative people think? Do great works of the imagination originate in words or in images? Is there a rational explanation for the sudden appearance of geniuses like Mozart or Einstein? Such questions have fascinated people for centuries; only in recent years, however, has cognitive psychology been able to provide some clues to the mysterious process of creativity. In this revised edition of Notebooks of the Mind, Vera John-Steiner combines imaginative insight with scientific precision to produce a startling account of the human mind working at its highest potential.

To approach her subject John-Steiner goes directly to the source, assembling the thoughts of "experienced thinkers"--artists, philosophers, writers, and scientists able to reflect on their own imaginative patterns. More than fifty interviews (with figures ranging from Jessica Mitford to Aaron Copland), along with excerpts from the diaries, letters, and autobiographies of such gifted giants as Leo Tolstoy, Marie Curie, and Diego Rivera, among others, provide illuminating insights into creative activity. We read, for example, of Darwin's preoccupation with the image of nature as a branched tree while working on his concept of evolution. Mozart testifies to the vital influence on his mature art of the wondrous "bag of memories" he retained from childhood. Anais Nin describes her sense of words as oppressive, explaining how imagistic free association freed her as a writer.

Adding these personal accounts to laboratory studies of thought process, John-Steiner takes a refreshingly holistic approach to the question of creativity. What emerges is an intriguing demonstration of how specific socio-cultural circumstances interact with certain personality traits to encourage the creative mind. Among the topics examined here are the importance of childhood mentor figures; the lengthy apprenticeship of the talented person; and the development of self-expression through highly individualistic languages, whether in images, movement or inner speech.

Now, with a new introduction describing developments in creativity research during the past decade, this award-winning book provides an uniquely broad-based study of the origins, development and fruits of human inspiration. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

A must read for people interested in creativity and thinking
"What is thinking?" That is the question with which author Vera John-Steiner opens this definitely thought-provoking book. It is a tall order to fill, but she does so both with insight and eloquence by studying experienced, productive thinkers. I have read this book twice because it is so full of gems I could not seem to collect them all in one visit. One of the biggest strengths of the book is that it provides the depth needed by academic researchers as well as the accessibility of language and explanation most non-academic readers prefer. She examines how thinking develops, the emotional and intellectual intensity of creative work, the tools creative thinkers use, and the similarities and differences among "languages of the mind" such as words, images, music and models. She bases her ideas on the reflective sources of thinkers themselves ­ more than 100 interviews, plus letters, journals, works in progress, biographies and autobiographies ­ sources which have been neglected by behavior scientists in the past but have proved invaluable for illuminating the succinct, telegrammatic thought processes or "inner shorthands into artistically and intellectually convincing achievements." By using in-depth analyses of these self-reports and "working papers" of great minds in the arts and sciences, John-Steiner shows that creativity (1) requires sustained effort (it is not an instantaneous "aha" as it is sometimes portrayed) and (2) is not a product of "lone genius" but of social scaffolding, interaction and apprenticeship. Creativity, like this book, is a journey of wonder, exploration, evaluation and novel ideas that is well worth taking. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Please Chop Off My Head
Things I like about this book that have nothing whatsoever to do with it's content: Nifty shade of red on the cover, it's not too big and in my recent aquisition of a crippled mental state not too intimidating, Marie Louise von Franz's name, the charming and magnetic ugliness shared by both MLVF and Flannery O' Conner that I find endearing and fasncinating and which makes me want to call them both up (I know I know they're dead) and invite them over for fresh bread and tea, the fact that it has the word "meaning" in the title something which I would desperately like in my life in some form at the present moment,and the fact that in my purchasing of it I got two, count em', two stamps on my card at Tidal Wave Books and am that much closer to my ten bucks worth of book credit at that aforementioned establishment.

Things I like about this book that have specifically to do with it's content: Von Franz is amazingly to the point. (Unfortunately for those of us looking to BE redeemed, often the point is that there is no set way to do that. [A formula, a formula, my kingdom for a formula] But, I won't hold that against her.) There's a ton of stuff behind what she's saying and she lets you know that without getting bogged down in it. She edits herself well. What amazes me is that this book is basically transcribed notes from a series of lectures, so she's doing all this editing verbally. That's cool. The subject is also cool. What she's looking at is 1) which events in fairy tales indicate themes of redemption (beating, chopping off body parts, bathing, burning, and the tossing on and off of animal skins) and 2)what the heck that might mean to me. Here's the amazing thing: she actually does make it mean something to me.

Slight Digression: I have a German father and I was read all those gruesome little Grimm fairy tales as a child. I loved them, but I wasn't in the habit of thinking that they were particularly applicable to my personal life. I mean, there's not a whole bunch of talking animals and evil stepmothers chopping my sisters up into itty bitty pieces in my life. But, low and behold, I read Von Franz, and I see "Oh, maybe I have been walking around in a donkey-skin after all."

Back to the Book content Bit: VF intersperses her commentary with dreams and case histories of her patients, quotes from Konrad Lorenz about animal behavior, and stories about her dog. She makes it all work. She doesn't give us any set format for how we should go about being redeemed, but rather, gives us a sort of verbal map of the great territory such a subject covers. She lets us peek through the door at the force behind the symbols that manifest themselves in dreams and fairytales that points us to our individual "right way". Right On.

Last Digression: Oh, I wish I could have her to tea. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description

Extracted from Volume 8. Includes the title essay and "On Psychic Energy." ... Read more

Reviews (8)

Covers Some New Ground on a Critical Topic
I am totally fascinated at how people acting with good intentions can actually make things worse, the Law of Unintended Consequences. I still want to read some Robert K. Merton who I think identified that law, but in the meantime, this book takes some steps toward figuring it out. I found the experimental portions to be a little dry, but I liked what he learned from them. The main thing I'll remember is how people can be guilty of "ballistic thinking". No, not exposive thinking, but more like shooting from the hip and not being able to adjust the flight of a bullet. With thinking it should be possible.

Amazing concepts
The Logic of Failure is a book that should be required reading for anyone who is involved in political decision making or the design of international assistance programs. In fact this volume plus How Nature Works: The Science of Self-Organized Criticality by Per Bak and Ubiquity: The Science of History by Mark Buchanan should probably be on the reading list of most of those who find themselves in complex situations requiring decisions.

German psychologist Dietrick Dorner is a professor of cognitive behavior at the University of Bamberg and director of the Cognitive Anthropology Project at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin. He is also the inventor of computer simulations that expose the errors in decision making that arise in complex situations. The book The Logic of Failure describes some of this research.

One of the most interesting aspects of Dr. Dorner's work is that much of the behavior, good and bad, elicited from participants in the computer simulations is seen in real settings. Depending upon the situation described, I found myself realizing that my own responses might not have been optimal had I been a test subject. Also surprising was that no matter whether one had the best of intentions or simply took the situation as lightly as a game, the outcome could be disastrous. (As another author, A. G. Cairns-Smith, has written, "Sometimes enthusiastic incompetence is worse than sloth!") Whether the improvement of living conditions among the imaginary Moros of Tanaland in the Sahel of North Africa or in the quality of life of the citizens of the simulated suburb of Greenville, the outcome of the decisions made was obviously highly correlated with the capacity of the test subjects for managing simultaneous, multifaceted, and interconnected analysis of the situations. Some were capable of summing up the key points of the problem, forming plans, taking actions, and assessing outcomes while others simply spun their wheels in an effort to look like they're doing something. Another surprising, one might almost say frightening, point was the almost natural inability of most people to interpret exponential functions, like growth rates, and to misjudge the effectiveness of measures taken to alter the course of outcomes. Real problems like the spread of AIDS in a population were off by a substantial amount and the effectiveness of programs attempting to curb its spread were totally misjudged, leading to an unfounded optimism. This lack of basic understanding of what amounts to compound interest is probably why so many people end up critically in debt because of credit cards.

Given the complexity of life in modern society and the decision making expected of the average citizen, critical thinking like that which Dr. Dorner's computer simulations help develop should be encouraged as early as early grade school. While the work gives some basic concepts that will help the reader improve his own responses to complex decision making, more than anything Dorner's work suggests that society needs to be more tolerant of those who are in stressful positions that require decisions based on inadequate data. It also suggests that it might be best to place individuals who are more skilled at making plans and taking action under these circumstances into positions of authority. Certainly testing of this type might serve as a better means of selecting them.

This is a book that matters
If all politicians, planners, economists, etc. would read this book, understand it, and take it seriously, we would have a different kind of world. Things would start to work and many of the types of disasters that occure over and over again would be significantly reduced in number. This book has a very important message for us.

A good explaination of the dymanics of bad decisions
Dr. Donier's book does a good job at explaining the systematic causes of projects that fall short of their goals. His conclusions, while not necessarily revolutionary, are well supported with data for experiments in the area of decision making. This book was well worth reading and a valuable addition to a broader way of thinking about why things don't work the way you think they would. I've used the five root causes to start to evaluate my descisons and plans. To date they've been helpful

Valuable expose' on why things go wrong, short on the fix.
This book points toward the fallacy of "single goal optimization" by highlighting consequences of shortsighted thinking. This alone makes the book valuable enough to purchase. Reflection on the book's analysis casts new light on many of our current social and physical problems. What is missing in this book is a cure - no surprise since such a cure could halt collective stupidity, a persistent universality of history. Still, the thoughtful and evocative illustrations are very useful in guiding individuals and private groups into comprehensive instead of narrow goal setting. The "take-away" for me in this book is that we must first decide what our goals are, and what their consequences will be,then we can set about to making policy. If the goals are too narrow, the result will be faulty. ... Read more

Book Description

This book explains how to conduct psychological research via the WWW, and outlines everything needed to get started—including HTML, data analysis with SPSS and Excel, and research design. It contains many examples ready to use on the Web, with brief discussions of the psychological theories being tested.Coverage includes the use of HTML Forms, a basic introduction to both Excel and SPSS, decision making research and data analysis, the use of SurveyWiz and factorWiz, impression formation, Heider's theory of balance in social relations, psychophysical stimuli, Bayes Theorem, JavaScript, and Polyform.For those involved in behavioral research, interested in exploring a new medium with many advantages over traditional research methods. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Internet research starts here
This easy-to-read book gives readers step-by-step directions on how to create Web pages and on-line surveys. Furthermore, it guides readers through the processes of posting psychological experiments on the Internet. The best part is that prior programming experience is not necessary!

Before reading this book, I thought Web-page creation was reserved for the computer savvy, which I am not. However, by the time I got to Chapter 5 (chapters are very short, by the way), I had created a colorful Web page, which included graphics, links, and tables. By the end of the book, I had learned how to create on-line questionnaires and how to write some basic JavaScript, which I used to create an on-line experiment.

The book is complimented by a CD-ROM that contains examples for each chapter and links to HTML and JavaScript tutorials, downloadable software, psychological experiments, graphics, and more. Overall, this book is a valuable resource for students, teachers, and professionals interested in learning the "basics" of Web-page development and conducting psychological research on the Internet. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Silvan Tomkins Redux
The work of psychologist Silvan Tomkins may finally earn reappraisal, thanks to this collection. Editors Sedgwick and Frank have chosen wisely from Tomkins' four-volume investigation of affect, Affect,Imagery, and Consciousness, presenting in this collection an overview of Tomkins'groundbreaking work.

Silvan Tomkins outlines a way of thinking about affect that is part-science, part-poetry; his work on shame, in particular, offers insights not just for psychologists but for anyone interested in the mysterious and pervasive mechanisms of shame in social and intimate life. The brilliant introduction, "Shame in the Cybernetic Fold," relocates Tomkins' work for a contemporary and interdisciplinary audience. Fans of editor Sedgwick will be fascinated, I think, by her explorations in unfamiliar territory; equally, the introduction excites interest in newcomer Frank. I found this book enthralling, leading me straight to Tomkins' own collections. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

your relationship to your inner man
"Continues the author's long-standing concern with the feminine focusing on the ways in which a woman may be undermined by a crippling relationship with her inner man. Powerful images from poetry, myth, dreams, analysis and personal experience. Illustrated. Index. Over 35,000 sold. "Practical and inspiring in turn, one is grateful for Woodman's experience and perception." - Journal of Analytical Psychology." -From the publisher ... Read more

Book Description

Traditional concepts of God are no longer tenable for many people who nevertheless experience a strong sense of the sacred. These people require an approach to religion that recognizes its actual manifestations within their own lives. The Religious Function of the Psyche offers a psychological model for the understanding of such experience, using the language and interpretive methods of depth psychology, particularly those of psychoanalytic self psychology.Offering an introduction to Jung and religion and a bridge between the transpersonal and the personal levels of the psyche, author Lionel Corbett suggests a psychological model for the relationship between the divine and the human and offers an alternative approach to spirituality. The problems of evil and suffering, and the notion of human development as an incarnation of spirit are dealt with by means of a religious approach to the psyche that can be brought easily into psychotherapeutic practice and applied by the individual in everyday life. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

A Brilliant Jungian on the Numinous!
Fascinating and thorough and utterly compelling, Dr. Corbett's book is an amazing look at the relationship between psyche and spirit. Recommended!

Very Rich and Filling
This book is packed with Jungian concepts. It is not at all a book for casual reading, something one just breezes through then shelves. It a text that one reads and then meditates upon and then reads again later on. Very difficult to milk it dry. One comes back and must come back to every page again and again if one is to relish all that Corbett has locked in his book.

Don't be misled by its length. Although just over 250 pages, every chapter is brimming with insights. Compared to the publications by the Jungian publisher Inner City Books whose titles are usually just over 100 pages long, I would say _Religious Function of the Psyche_ is equivalent to 10 of them. The adjective that comes to mind is rich, extremely rich.

Feast upon such insights as the following:

"Our emotional suffering always contains an element of the divine. The archetype at the center of the complex, no matter how painful, is this element, so there is no escape from the numinosum at the core of our difficulty. This is why the Self images which appear to us always contain elements of our deepest needs and fears. If the divine is never further away than our suffering, then our suffering becomes the beginning of our spirituality. Any attempt to develop spiritual techniques that do not penetrate and understand suffering, run the risk of avoiding the sacred itself."

I dare say it is one of the best Jungian books I have come across. The style of writing and the depth to which it dives bears the distinctive mark of introverted intuitive thinking--the very same typology that characterizes Carl Jung. It is technical in this sense--that it is deep and adroit--but Corbett is not muddled in his writing. On the contrary he is able to bring his audience to a very high level without the reader experiencing vertigo (and should you notice that I have contradictory metaphors here, please note that it is a fact that the highest is also the deepest and vice versa). Hats off to Mr. Corbett for achieving this rare feat. Even Jung's abstruse writings cannot compare with the Corbett's lucidity.

Recommended; good depth-psychological resource.
This useful exposition on the transpersonal dynamics of the psyche belongs on every depth-psych reader's bookshelf. It also provides some corrective insights into the limitations of classical Jungian thought and archetypal psychology. Not for beginners. Definitely recommended. -- Craig Chalquist, creator of the To Thine Own Self site on the Web. ... Read more

Book Description

Critical Acclaim for Clinical Behavior Therapy "This book will be helpful not only to those who regard this [cognitive-behavior therapy] as their primary orientation, but to anyone who wants to be a complete therapist." —Allen Frances, MD Duke University Medical Center "This classic text…was a distinct favorite among the students enrolled in my clinical assessment and treatment courses. I hope the updated edition will be read by graduate students in clinical and counseling psychology, social workers, and all mental health professionals who wish to be truly effective therapists." —Arnold A. Lazarus, PhD Rutgers University "…particularly innovative and impressive. Their lucid description of cognitive variables… broadens the range of interventions available to the behavioral practitioner." —Sheldon Rose, PhD University of Wisconsin School of Social Work "A classic—updated. I recommend it not only for behavior therapists but for any clinical practitioner of any profession who is looking for procedures that work." —Joel Fischer, DSW University of Hawaii at Manoa ... Read more