Most people go through life chasing illusions of success, fame, wealth, happiness, and few things are more painful than the reality-revealing loss of an illusion. But if illusions are negative, why is the opposite, being disillusioned, also negative? In this essay based on his inaugural writer-in-residence lecture at Athabasca University, internationally acclaimed writer Steven Heighton mathematically evaluates the paradox of disillusionment and the negative aspects of hope. Drawing on writers such as Herman Melville, Leonard Cohen, Kate Chopin, and Thich Nhat Hanh, Heighton considers the influence of illusions on creativity, art, and society. This meditation on language and philosophy reveals the virtues of being disillusioned and, perhaps, the path to freedom.

Hope for Leaders Facing Burnout and Discouragement Around the world, discouragement erodes the vitality of organizations. Visionaries often succumb to cynicism. Zealous advocates give up. Leaders coast as their passion for the cause grows cold. Grounded in research, this book is an invitation for followers of Jesus to sustain hope in long-term service. It's about moving past the false hope of idealism and the faint hope of disillusionment to discover true Christian hope. You will gain encouragement through the study of the book of Jeremiah woven throughout as the authors explore how the Lord prophetically met and sustained Jeremiah during his lifetime of faithfulness despite literally nothing going as he'd hoped. Glean further inspiration by reading the stories of Christian leaders from around the globe: Zimbabwe, Haiti, Guatemala, Poland, Palestine, the Philippines, India, Zambia, and Lebanon. For this is a moment when we need the global Church's perspective and influence. Don't give up and don't check out. These are confounding and perilous days, yet God's sustaining presence can bring joy, hope, and encouragement even amid heartache and disappointment.

Speaking of crisis -- A suspicious history -- Economies of loss -- Exhausted futures -- Solidary selves -- Argentine afterword.

At the height of María de Zayas’s popularity in the mid-eighteenth century, the number of editions in print of her work was exceeded only by the novels of Cervantes. But by the end of the nineteenth century, Zayas had been excluded from the Spanish literary canon because of her gender and the sociopolitical changes that swept Spain and Europe. Exemplary Tales of Love and Tales of Disillusion gathers a representative sample of seven stories, which features Zayas’s signature topics—gender equality and domestic violence—written in an impassioned tone overlaid with conservative Counter-Reformation ideology. This edition updates the scholarship since the most recent English translations, with a new introduction to Zayas’s entire body of stories, and restores Zayas’s author’s note and prologue, omitted from previous English-language editions. Tracing her slow but steady progress from notions of ideal love to love’s treachery, Exemplary Tales of Love and Tales of Disillusion will restore Zayas to her rightful place in modern letters.

Illusion, Disillusion, and Irony in Psychoanalysis explores and develops the role of illusion and daydream in everyday life, and in psychoanalysis. Using both clinical examples and literary works, idealised illusions and the inevitable disillusion that is met when reality makes an impact, are carefully explored. Idealised phantasies which involve a timeless universe inevitably lead to disillusion in the face of reality which introduces an awareness of time, ageing, and eventually death. If the illusions are recognised as phantasy rather than treated as fact, the ideal can be internalised as a symbol and serve as a measure of excellence. Steiner shows that the cruelty of truth needs to be recognised, as well as the deceptive nature of illusion, and that relinquishing omnipotence is a critical and difficult developmental task that is relived in analysis. Illusion, Disillusion, and Irony in Psychoanalysis will be of great use to the psychoanalyst or psychotherapist seeking to understand the patient’s withdrawal into a phantasy world, and the struggle to allow the impact of reality.

Though primarily the memoir of a leading Opposition figure, this book is also, in part, a history of Pakistan. Starting from Mazari's early years in opposition to the Ayub Khan government, and moving through the Bhutto and Zia periods, the book makes interesting revelations about the leading political players and the events of those turbulent times.

The book focuses on two major writers of the 1930s and 1940s - Eugene O'Neill and Tennessee Williams - one whose writing career was just ending and the other whose career was just beginning.

For some years now, psychoanalysts have been trying to understand the implications of neuroscientific findings for psychoanalytic theory and practice. In On Psychoanalysis, Disillusion, and Death: Dead certainties Antonie Ladan looks at how findings from neuroscience and memory research can inform our understanding of some of the most important psychoanalytic concepts, such as transference and unconscious fantasy. Central to the book are the 'dead certainties' that, to a great extent, determine how we lead our lives. Antonie Ladan argues that these certainties are too self-evident to be seen, as invisible as the air we breathe. He shows how in our associations with others, we are in large measure 'guided' by 'dead certain' relational patterns of which we are not conscious, but that remain implicit. Using clinical examples, Ladan illustrates how a specific form of observation, where the analysand and the analyst pay careful attention to their relationship over an extended period of time, makes it possible to gradually recognise these automatic expectations and behaviours in relational situations. On Psychoanalysis, Disillusion, and Death explores how the psychoanalyst can bring the implicit patterns, within which analysands find themselves trapped, to their attention enabling them to look at the world from a 'disillusioning' perspective in order to accept life and the prospect of death for what they are. This book will be of interest to psychotherapists, analytical psychologists, psychoanalysts, therapists and students.

Disillusionment: Watergate and the Betrayal of Richard M. Nixon