eBook - ePub

Psychotherapy, the Alchemical Imagination and Metaphors of Substance

Name: Psychotherapy, the Alchemical Imagination and Metaphors of Substance
ISBN: 9783111159904

Alan Bleakley,

262 pages
English
ePUB (mobile friendly)
Available on iOS & Android

eBook - ePub

Psychotherapy, the Alchemical Imagination and Metaphors of Substance

Alan Bleakley,

About this book

Alchemy is popularly viewed as a secret way of turning worthless base metal into gold, and then a precursor to modern chemistry. This is often taken as a metaphor for psychological development. This book describes an innovative "third way" for both the education and exercise of an alchemical imagination that embraces both material matters and psychological insight: alchemy as lyrical poetics, or the intensive production of embodied metaphor. Alchemy here is viewed as an immanent set of metaphor-driven "best practices" for indwelling complex and contradictory earthly matters in a sensual, artistic and humane manner. Or, again, it describes best psychotherapeutic practice. Alchemy is read not as a medium for "personal growth", but optimal co-existence with the natural world. It is an eco-logical rather than ego-logical project with deep aesthetic concerns (education of the senses in close noticing) and political intentions (a democracy of worldly things). The book echoes post-Freudian developments in psychoanalysis that avoid the mysticism of symbol systems to work rather with everyday signs and linguistic registers such as embodied metaphors, keeping the focus on known and sensed phenomena rather than abstractions.

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Yes, you can access Psychotherapy, the Alchemical Imagination and Metaphors of Substance by Alan Bleakley in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & European Literary Criticism. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.