The Divided Self, R.D. Laing's groundbreaking exploration of the nature of madness, illuminated the nature of mental illness and made the mysteries of the mind comprehensible to a wide audience. First published in 1960, this watershed work aimed to make madness comprehensible, and in doing so revolutionized the way we perceive mental illness. Using case studies of patients he had worked with, psychiatrist R. D. Laing argued that psychosis is not a medical condition, but an outcome of the 'divided self', or the tension between the two personas within us: one our authentic, private identity, and the other the false, 'sane' self that we present to the world. Laing's radical approach to insanity offered a rich existential analysis of personal alienation and made him a cult figure in the 1960s, yet his work was most significant for its humane attitude, which put the patient back at the centre of treatment. Includes an introduction by Professor Anthony S. David. 'One of the twentieth century's most influential psychotherapists' Guardian 'Laing challenged the psychiatric orthodoxy of his time ... an icon of the 1960s counter-culture' The Times

Investigates Plato's account of the tripartite soul, looking at how the theory evolved over the Republic, Phaedrus and Timaeus.

When the decomposed remains of a young woman are discovered just outside Birmingham, criminologist Will Traynor is drawn into a baffling investigation. "Plenty of unexpected twists sure to set pulses racing, leading to a shock ending guaranteed to blindside even the most experienced thriller reader" - Booklist Starred Review When the badly decomposed remains of a young woman are discovered in an isolated wooded area just outside Birmingham, the victim is quickly identified as Amy Peters, a Manchester University student who disappeared three years earlier. She is one of five young women who vanished from the streets of Manchester within a two-year period. Called in to assist the police investigation, criminologist Will Traynor believes they are looking for an intelligent, socially confident individual, someone adept at covering his tracks. But why would the killer transport the victim on an eighty-mile journey from Manchester to Birmingham? If he can find the answer to that question, Traynor believes he has the key to cracking the case. But at every stage of the investigation, the killer seems to be one step ahead of him. If he's going to outsmart him, Will realizes he's going to have to play this twisted individual at his own deadly game.

This is an accessible introduction to the full range of the philosophy of William James. It portrays that philosophy as containing a deep division between a Promethean type of pragmatism and a passive mysticism. The pragmatist James conceives of truth and meaning as a means to control nature and make it do our bidding. The mystic James eschews the use of concepts in order to penetrate to the inner conscious core of all being, including nature at large. Richard Gale attempts to harmonize these pragmatic and mystical perspectives.

"Seen at the time of its publication in 1972 as an embarrassment by some of his friends and a disappointment by many of the admirers of his earlier romantic and idyllic works, Der Steppenwolf is now generally considered to be Hermann Hesse's most innovative and influential novel, comparable in its modernity, according to Thomas Mann, to James Joyce's Ulysses and Andre Gide's Les Faux Monnayeurs. What offended early readers, namely the author's willingness to explore and attempt to come to terms with dark side of his self and of a society in transition, is precisely what appealed to rebellious readers in the turbulent sixties and seventies and helped make Steppenwolf the most widely read German novel of the twentieth century. Ironically, this story of a fifty-year-old man, which Hesse thought younger people would not understand, has been and continues to be a favorite of college students." "After briefly tracing the extraordinary development of Hesse's popular reception, David G. Richards surveys the critical writing on Steppenwolf, from Hugo Ball's remarks in the first biography of Hesse, which was published the same year as the novel, and the other primarily biographical studies of the prewar period, through the exploration of important facets of the work in mostly German dissertations of the fifties and the explosive expansion of scholarship in the boom years of the sixties and seventies to the more modest achievements and the consolidating studies of the eighties and nineties."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

I'm being pulled in a thousand different directions. As a therapist, Chuck DeGroat hears that line all the time. "I hear it from students and software developers," he says. "I hear it from spiritual leaders and coffee baristas. And I hear it from my own inner self." We all feel that nasty pull to and fro, the frantic busyness that exhausts us and threatens to undo us. And we all think we know the solution -- more downtime, more relaxation, more rest. And we're all wrong. As DeGroat himself has discovered, the real solution to what pulls us apart is wholeheartedness, a way of living and being that can transform us from the inside out. And that's what readers of this book will discover too.

"It isn't easy to find an informed and critical look at the impact of digital media practices on human lives and minds. Ivo Quartiroli offers an informed critique based in both an understanding of technology and of human consciousness." --Howard Rheingold, author of The Virtual Community and Smart Mobs. Howard Rheingold, Derrick de Kerckhove, Arthur Kroker, Eric McLuhan, Michael McLuhan, Douglas Rushkoff, Michael Wesch, Hilarie Cash, Erik Davis, Michael Heim, Maggie Jackson, Ervin Laszlo and others on the forefront of technology and media studies praised The Digitally Divided Self as a milestone in the understanding of human nature in relationship with digital technology. Intersecting media studies, psychology and spirituality, The Digitally Divided Self exposes the nature of the malleable mind and explores the religious and philosophical influences which leave it obsessed with the incessant flow of information.

In ‘The Politics of Experience’ and the visionary ‘Bird of Paradise’, R.D. Laing shows how the straitjacket of conformity imposed on us all leads to intense feelings of alienation and a tragic waste of human potential. He throws into question the notion of normality, examines schizophrenia and psychotherapy, transcendence and ‘us and them’ thinking, and illustrates his ideas with a remarkable case history of a ten-day psychosis. ‘We are bemused and crazed creatures,’ Laing suggests. This outline of ‘a thoroughly self-conscious and self-critical human account of man’ represents a major attempt to understand our deepest dilemmas and sketch in solutions. ‘Everyone in contemporary psychiatry owes something to R.D. Laing’ Anthony Clare, the Guardian.