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Reason and Life begins with a critical historical examination of past forms of reason (Ancient and Modern) as well as more recent contenders (Existentialism, Phenomenology, the "New Marxism"). All of these are critiqued as not capable of adequately interpreting life, that is, the interaction of living beings and their environment, because of their fixation upon the role of the being-in-itself, the knower, the individual consciousness. The author suggest as an alternative approach replacing Moder...

Existential therapy has been practiced and continues to be practiced in many forms and situations throughout the world. But until now, it has lacked a coherent structure, and analysis of its tenets, and an evaluation of its usefulness. Irvin Yalom, whose Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy has rendered such a service to that discipline since 1970, provides existential psychotherapy with a background, a synthesis, and a framework.Organized around what Yalom identifies as the four ultima...

We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life-daily and hourly. Our answer must consist not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual. When Man's Search for Meaning was first published in 1959, it was hailed by Carl Rogers as "one of...

This volume is the first to showcase the interdisciplinary nature of Terror Management Theory, providing a detailed overview of how rich and diverse the field has become since the late 1980s, and where it is going in the future. It offers perspectives from psychology, political science, communication, health, sociology, business, marketing and cultural studies, among others, and in the process reveals how our existential ponderings permeate our behavior in almost every area of our lives. It will...

Nostalgia is a topic that most lay people are familiar with, but, until recently, few social scientists understood. Once viewed as a disease, nostalgia is now considered to be an important psychological resource. It involves revisiting personally cherished memories that involve close others. When people engage in nostalgia, they experience a boost in positive psychological states such as positive mood, feelings of social connectedness, self-esteem, self-continuity, and perceptions of meaning in...

Unruly Spirits connects the study of séances, telepathy, telekinesis, materializations, and other parapsychic phenomena in France during the age of Sigmund Freud to an epistemological crisis that would eventually yield the French adoption of psychoanalysis. Skillfully navigating experiments conducted by nineteenth-century French psychical researchers and the wide-ranging debates that surrounded their work, M. Brady Brower situates the institutional development of psychical research at the inters...

The ethos of existential therapy is that practitioners seek to co-create a therapeutic alliance with clients that emphasises being with rather than doing to. Trainees and practitioners alike are therefore eager to have access to accounts of what senior practitioners do in their day-to-day practice. Also, it is rare that books both show the reader what the therapist does and explicitly relate this to cutting-edge thinking in theory. Case Studies in Existential Therapy is designed to address bo...

The other day, as I came out from the station, I caught a glimpse of dark hair and for a second, I thought it was you, Mina. So begins this searingly honest account, written by a psychotherapist, who returns from her summer vacation to discover that one of her patients has died unexpectedly: a young woman, with whom she had felt a particularly close connection. That day she carries on as normal, sees all her patients, only to wake in the middle of the night, sweating and shaking in the dark, an...