The poet's voice in the making of mind / Russell Meares.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Meares, Russell, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Thought and thinking.

Consciousness.

Developmental psychology.

Physical Description:

ix, 227 pages ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Abingdon, Oxon ; New York : Routledge, 2016.

Summary:

How did the human mind evolve and how does it emerge, again and again, in individual lives? In The Poet's Voice in the Making of Mind, Russell Meares presents a fascinating inquiry into the origin of mind. He proposes that the way in which mind, or self, evolved, may resemble the way it emerges in childhood play and that a poetic, analogical style of thought is a biological necessity, essential to bringing to fruition the achievement of the human mind. Taking a fresh look at the language used in psychotherapy, he shows how language, and conversation in particular, is central to the development and maintenance of self. His theory incorporates the ideas from William James, Hughlings, Jackson, Janet, Hobson, Gerald Edelman, Wolf Singer, Vygotsky and others. It is illuminated by extracts from literary artists such as Wallace Stevens, W.S. Merwin, Virginia Woolf, Joseph Conrad and Shakespeare. Encompassing psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, evolution, child development, literary criticism, philosophy, studies of mind and consciousness, The Poet's Voice in the Making of Mind is an engaging, ground-breaking and thought-provoking work that will appeal to psychotherapists and psychoanalysts, as well as anyone interested in the emergence of mind and self. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction: conversational play and the evolution of self

James : what we mean by personal selves

Analogy and truth

Brain bases of self

The poet's voice

Little emotions

Empathy and utterance

Pointing and depicting

Myth and proto-myth

Action patterns and the evolution of language

The doubleness of Shakespeare

Impediments to proto-conversation : blindness and deafness

The shape of culture and self

An evolutionary hypothesis

Automorphosis: the dreams of Wolfgang Pauli

Personal myth.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780415572330

0415572339

9780415572347

0415572347

OCLC:

712124037