Each and every one of us grapples with our own highly personal mythology-the psychic force that allows us to weave the fragments of our experience into coherent story. These mythologies shape our every thought, perception, and action, helping us to feel safe and secure in our identities. But when our personal mythologies do not grow and change along with us, we find ourselves stuck in self-defeating life patterns.In Personal Mythology, David Feinstein, Ph.D., and Stanley Krippner, Ph.D., hailed by Jean Houston as "masters of the geography of the inscapes," provide a series of detailed exercises developed over a combined 80 years of clinical practice, personal development workshops, and teaching on psychological topics. Using ritual, dreams, and imagination to liberate you from the mythologies of your childhood and culture, the 12-week course will ignite the mystery of a transformed inner life into authentic outer expression. This third edition of a life-changing classic has been revised to include a new Support Guide combining their ground-breaking model for incorporating Energy Psychology into the process of personal transformation.

Living Myth explores the dilemma of how to live life creatively at a time when the dominant myths of our culture are losing their power to give meaning to our lives. Using C. G. Jung's idea of discovering a "personal myth," D. Stephenson Bond reflects on the psychology of mythic imagination, as a force in both culture and individual life. He argues that meaning is experienced subjectively through the stirring of imagination and fantasy in the individual, which touches the larger impersonal, archetypal patterns. The book offers hopeful insights into the possibilities of cultural renewal and individual meaning through the restoration of the imagination.

Riting Myth, Mythic Writing: Plotting Your Personal Story is a both a theoretical as well as interactive book on the nature of personal myth. Its intention is to offer participants who wish to explore further the terms and structure of their personal myth over 80 writing meditations that are spread throughout 9 chapters in order to guide the readers-writers on a pilgrimage into the deepest layers of their personal myth.

This book invites readers on a journey rich in images, thoughts, musings, and inner dialogues. Spiritual, psychological, and ecological themes are explored in ways that reveal infinite vistas of possibility. Part oracle, part muse, this book inspires vision and originality, allowing readers to create, define, and live their own personal mythology.

Joseph Campbell famously defined myth as ''other people's religion.'' But he also said that one of the basic functions of myth is to help each individual through the journey of life, providing a sort of travel guide or map to reach fulfillment - or, as he called it, bliss. For Campbell, many of the world's most powerful myths support the individual's heroic path toward bliss. In Pathways to Bliss, Campbell examines this personal, psychological side of myth. Like his classic bestselling books Myths to Live By and The Power of Myth, Pathways to Bliss draws from Campbell's popular lectures and dialogues, which highlight his remarkable storytelling and ability to apply the larger themes of world mythology to personal growth and the quest for transformation. Here he anchors mythology's symbolic wisdom to the individual, applying the most poetic mythical metaphors to the challenges of our daily lives. Campbell dwells on life's important questions. Combining cross-cultural stories with the teachings of modern psychology, he examines the ways in which our myths shape and enrich our lives. He explores the many insights of Carl Jung; the notion of self as the hero; and how East and West differ in their approaches to the ego. The book also includes an extensive question-and-answer session that ranges from mythological readings of the Bible to how the Hero's Journey unfolds for women. With his usual wit and insight, Campbell draws connections between ancient symbols and modern art, schizophrenia and the Hero's Journey. Along the way, he shows how myth can help each of us truly identify and follow our bliss.

Freedom of choice is at the core of the American story. But what if choice is fake?Americans are fixated on the idea of choice. Our political theory is based on the consent of the governed. Our legal system is built upon the argument that people freely make choices and bear responsibility for them. And what slogan could better express the heart of our consumer culture than "Have it your way"?In this provocative book, Kent Greenfield poses unsettling questions about the choices we make. What if they are more constrained and limited than we like to think? If we have less free will than we realize, what are the implications for us as individuals and for our society? To uncover the answers, Greenfield taps into scholarship on topics ranging from brain science to economics, political theory to sociology. His discoveries—told through an entertaining array of news events, personal anecdotes, crime stories, and legal decisions—confirm that many factors, conscious and unconscious, limit our free will. Worse, by failing to perceive them we leave ourselves open to manipulation. But Greenfield offers useful suggestions to help us become better decision makers as individuals, and to ensure that in our laws and public policy we acknowledge the complexity of choice.

This book should be value for all those who are interested in enhancing their self-understanding. It should also serve as useful classroom text for undergraduates and advanced students in personality and social psychology, counselling and psychotherapy.

Joseph Campbell helped millions of people appreciate the power andrelevance of mythology for modern life. Personal Mythology brings you thenext step. Each of us lives a personal mythology, an inner drama whose plot we enact over andover in our daily lives. This guiding mythology determines how we think and feel andeven what we do. Understanding that mythology can be a powerful tool fortransformation. This practical guide takes you on a journey of self-discovery using rituals,dreams, and imagination. Through a series of detailed exercises, you are shown how toexamine and systematically make changes in the personal myths that underlie your life. Inthis way you become less bound by the mythologies of childhood and society and havegreater influence over personal patterns that may once have seemed beyond yourcontrol.

John Whiting is shown to involve all his heroes in a monumental attack and immediate collapse, after which they retreat into exile with recluses. Seeking romantic rebellion, but unable to leave the protection of their sanctuaries, they live incoherently amid their dreams and anxieties.

Most books on discovering one's "personal myth" focus on uncovering the general patterns or scripts of a life. STORIED LIVES by depth psychologist Craig Chalquist, PhD goes much farther by showing how specific myths play out from cradle to grave. Personal accounts of discovering and working with these myths enliven the book's emphasis on refashioning these plot lines from the inside out.