Psychology

Archetypal Imagination

This unique book is about freeing psychology's poetic imagination from the dead weight of unconscious assumptions about the soul. Whether we think of the soul scientifically or medically, behaviorally or in terms of inner development, all of us are used to thinking of it in an individual context, as something personal. In this book, however, we are asked to consider psychology from a truly transpersonal perspective as a cultural, universal-human phenomenon.

Noel Cobb teaches us to look at the world as the record of the soul's struggles to awaken, as the soul's poetry. From this point of view, the true basis of the mind is poetic. Beauty, love, and creativity are as much instincts of the soul as sexuality or hunger. Thus these essays praise the value and nobility of the imagination, and instead of the usual masters of psychology the exemplars here are the artists and mystics of the Western tradition: Dante, Rumi, Rilke, Munch, Lorca, Schumann, Tarkovsky.

I like Noel Cobb's outcries on behalf of ferocity, loneliness, anxiety, "the hideous hag of life," beauty sitting in the lap of terror, Edvard Munch's paintings and Garcia Lorca's panther-like poems - let's have more.

- Robert Bly

Understand Your Temperament!

Childs give us a refreshing treatment of the ancient doctrine of the four temperaments: choleric, sanguine, phlegmatic, and melancholic. Dr. Childs shows us how to recognize the temperaments in ourselves and others, and how to understand their working in our behavior. he investigates in depth the origins and manifestations of the temperaments in both their psychological and physiological aspects.

Included are fascinating discussions of the relationships between adults of various temperaments and matters of compatibility in partnership, family, and workplace situations. There is also a section dealing with the temperaments of children, which includes helpful advice on how to help them in terms of attributes of behavior.

Crisis Points

When you are going through a major crisis in your life, you may attempt to help yourself. Other times, the crisis may not be yours, but a friend's and you may want to help. As a counselor, Julian Sleigh has helped many people get through various crises in their lives and offers some of his best insights in Crisis Points.

In this book, he has distilled his years of experience into a process of twelve steps that help to resolve all sorts of difficult situations. These steps are designed to help us face the facts of our lives and to per­ceive the feelings and emotions that arise from our destiny.

Julian Sleigh is a Christian Community priest and counselor who works in South Africa. He is the author of Friends and Lovers, a sensitive look at the issues surrounding friendship. intimacy and loyalty, and Thirteen to Nineteen, a book for parents with teenagers.

The Anthroposophical Understanding of the Soul

The self-conscious human soul participates in two worlds: the external world and a still deeper interior world. As it mediates between these two worlds, an ever shifting stream of dynamic polarities continually moves through the soul in love-hate, joy-sorrow, pleasure-displeasure, desire-dissatisfaction, and laughing-weeping. The author examines these and other psychological processes.

This is a "classic" - one of the first books on the subject by an early student of Steiner. It was at Zeylmans' request that Steiner delivered the lectures published as Karmic Relationships, Vol. 3. And it was Zeylmans who later made it his life's work to reunite the Dutch Anthroposophic Society with the International Society in Dornach after the 1935 rupture - a task that took him until 1968 to complete.