(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best psychoanalysis books

Zizek has a whole thing on enjoyment and how in today's society there's an injunction, a compulsion, an obligation, that we enjoy; and we feel guilty if we fall short, if we miss out. It is precisely here that Zizek defends the continued relevance of psychoanalysis. Enjoyment is demanded by the ruling ideology.

I don't remember the book (enjoyment as a political category?) but I am sure you can find many youtube talks where Zizek develops this i.e. this

p.s. I share your worry, and I agree with Horkheimer that the objective consciousness is objective despair at the world, only it cannot lead into the resignation he succumbed too. enjoyment must be differentiated from happiness, or contentedness. Aside from finding joys against the current (in both senses) the only recompense - and a meagre one at that - that I have found is cough philosophy, or rather a ruthless critique of all that exists. A critique of that culture and those cultural industries that claim to be the servants of our enjoyment but instead suffocate it. Demonstrating the falseness of existing enjoyment, pleasure, in a breath its non-existence; is done in the service of pleasure, of sensual happiness. Just as Marx did with utopia, it must be denied in reality so it may become a reality. The very impulse to enjoy throws you against the advertised joy exercised between work breaks today. Analysis here gets you into the critique of capitalism which necessitates and is necessitated by, the immanent ecological crisis. In other words your enjoyment problem is an ecological problem, and the ecological problem is an enjoyment problem (not only in the terms of what are the costs of enjoyment, but how do we enjoy, what are it's conditions, and is this really enjoyment?)

I like Camus a lot, but his prose is super hard to read sometimes. I don't really like Nietzsche; he's a massive fucking dick. I like Camus leagues more because Camus explains things and leads you to his conclusion while Nietzsche just preaches and rambles on about how much he hates this or that and how stupid this or that is.

Not all of these called themselves philosophers, but here's some I like:

I'm not stoic by any means, but I love Marcus Aurelius's Meditations. I think it's interesting how someone could write musings that are relevant millennia later.

John Milton wrote Paradise Lost, but he has a ton of prose too. Here's a book full of it along with annotations and modernized grammar. Milton wasn't the most satisfactory person, but his writing is incredible.

I haven't read this myself, but a friend of mine really liked Man's Search for Meaning by Frankl. Some of his friends called him pretentious for reading the book though (I wasn't one of them).

If you like Camus, you'll probably like Sartre's Existentialism is a Humanism. Again, I haven't read it myself, but it was also recommended to me because I like Camus.

Jean-Paul Marat was a journalist during the French Revolution, but his writings sometimes crossed into philosophical territory. He was a huge populist, and I love his work when he's not calling for the deaths of hundreds of people. You can read some of it here.

I'm huge into theology, so I love Thomas Aquinas. He wrote a lot about theology and Christianity and was a major Christian apologist. He also dabbled in theodicy. Smart man.

And to mix it up, here's one I haven't checked out but is top on my list: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz's Selected Works. She was a writer and a nun from Spain who was self-taught--all qualities you usually don't find in philosophers, so she'll be a unique read.

In addition to the answers here, I'd like to add a bit on renaissance and late medieval humor. Some of the material ages well, like the comedies of Shakespeare or the best bits of Chaucer. Elements like sexual humor, authority, gender roles and the swapping of them are present, as ever. According to Mihail Bahtin's Rabelais and his world this is a form of resistance by the masses to make fun of those in power in a carnivalistic fashion. Bahtin made this argument about the renaissance and he is more of a literary critic, but I think that the idea can be cautiously generalized. The differences between renaissance humor and today is of course hard to say certainly, but judging from what we have, there are certain elements, which stand out.

Peter Burke had a good essay on the subject in The Varieties of Cultural History, where he focused on Italian humor especially. But in renaissance humor the amount of scatological humor is one of the things that stand out. For example Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel has that famous passage about different methods of wiping one's ass, coming to the conclusion, that a live goose is best. Of course such humor is popular today, but the amount of excrement is perhaps bigger in late medieval, renaissance times.

Another thing is perhaps the cruelty of a lot of jokes. Burke's description of beffa(if I remember that word correctly) humor are often examples of someone being defeated in a contest of wits, which is of course not surprising, but quite often the punishment of the brunt of the joke can be pretty harsh sliding from your basic cuckolding jokes to depiction of castration as something funny that can befall someone, if they are stupid enough/married and overbearing in their jealousy.

Boccacio's Decamerone as well as Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales have of course their share of humor based on pretty cruel infidelities from a modern view point, but often the point is that the the marriage is a porly arranged one pairing a young woman with an older, less energetic man and in Boccacio it often also comes to women of nobility having been forced to marry someone of baser lineage.

some sources:

http://www.amazon.com/Varieties-Cultural-History-Peter-Burke/dp/0801484928/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1376022173&sr=8-1&keywords=varieties+of+cultural+history

A qi where Stephen Fry reads Rabelais:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rertpJPid1k

And of course the books themselves have funny stuff from a modern perspective and also great examples of humor from the era.

I've been studying him on my own for a while. I was a philosophy and religion major in college and never studied psychology per se. i first encountered him in a Psychology of Religion class. I don't really recall my first reactions to his writing but i know it was not until i was "reintroduced" to him that I really became hooked. That was later when I was studying Gnosticism; which is an incredibly interesting area to research in conjunction with Jung since Jung was able to make incredibly astute and accurate statements concerning the Gnostics with only scraps of original material and the writings of detractors that has survived, but the modern reader has the ability to consult the dead sea scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Index; a wealth of original source material that Jung could only dream of having access to. I've basically been reading his collected works since this time and I have yet to come across such a viable world-view. After a life-time of interest and study of philosophy (in college it was mostly Eastern thought (for Jung's take on the wealth of Eastern symbolism, but probably more interesting also his take on why westerners are drawn to eastern religions (and ultimately why its probably not very useful); see Commentary on "The Secret of the Golden Flower" found at the beginning of Alchemical Studies)) I had found what I was looking for in psychology and I continue to encounter passages in Jung that seem to be perfect explanations for the reasons behind the reality I encounter daily.

No problem and thank you for the compliment. Overall, I love experiential and psychodynamic theories but I try to approach any theory as a means to an end. Any clinician that becomes too dogmatic risks missing the point (that is, helping the client and not serving your own ends). I like playing between affect and behavior with clients and attachment theory is behind it all for me.

In any case, why don't you ask an easier question? Haha. There is so much material out there for each modality that I could recommend plenty.

Strengths-focused

• 1001 Solution-Focused Questions by Fredrike Bannink
  
  
• Positive CBT by Fredrike Bannink
  
  
• Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman
  
  Experiential
  
  
• Learning Emotion-Focused Therapy by Robert Elliott
  
  
• Emotion-Focused Therapy, 2nd ed. by Les Greenberg
  
  
• Focusing in Clinical Practice by Ann Cornell
  
  Attachment
  
  
• Attachment in Psychotherapy by David Wallin
  
  
• Affect Regulation Theory by Daniel Hill
  
  
• The Healing Power of Emotion by Diana Fosha, Daniel Siegel, & Martin Solomon, ed.
  
  Psychodynamic
  
  
• The Transforming Power of Affect by Diana Fosha
  
  
• Treating Affect Phobia by Leigh McCullough
  
  
• Psychodynamic Therapy: A Guide to Evidence-Based Practice by Richard Summers and Jacques Barber
  
  
• Time-Limited Dynamic Psychotherapy by Hanna Levenson
  
  
• Negotiating the Therapeutic Alliance by Jeremy Safran
  
  Hope that helps! Feel free to PM me too. I wonder if /u/evilqueenoftherealm would have any suggestions too.

I'm a pretty well-confirmed athiest at this point. I tend to view the current manifestations of religion as following in a long tradition of mythmaking by human cultures.

With that in mind, you might look into some psychology in addition to your religious research. I'm a writer, which is how I came by Jung and Campbell and Booker -- but I think the idea of underlying patterns of thought that guide our own mythmaking is of broader use than simply helping me understand storytelling better.

I've read the following, and suggest you do as well!

Jung

The Basic Writings of CG Jung

Man and His Symbols

The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious

Psychology and Religion

Campbell

The Hero With A Thousand Faces

The Masks of God (Vols. 1 - 3)

Myths to Live By

Booker

The Seven Basic Plots

There are a lot more, but those are the ones I'd start with. As an undergrad, I majored in English and Rhetoric, and minored in both Religion and Poetry -- this cultural storytelling stuff is important to me.

As a library science graduate student, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that you can get all of these books from your local library -- and can enlist the aid of the reference desk in finding more material for your research. Believe me, there's nothing a reference worker likes more than an interesting topic -- i.e. something that doesn't involve directing people to the bathroom, or helping people find books on filing their taxes. We're trained to help with real research! Use us!

I suppose I'd recommend he listen to Alan Watts talking about Jung, or an audiobook or something.

But if he refuses to read anything Jung wrote, then what's the use?

Memories, Dreams, Reflections is probably the most accessible volume Jung wrote (he dictated it to one of his best students, who edited it and compiled it). It's an autobiography of sorts, but it includes a lot of thoughtful summaries of his best and most weighty ideas. It's also more colorful and entertaining than his scholarly works.

After that, I'd go with On the Nature of the Psyche and The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious for an absolute minimum baseline understanding of Jung's core ideas. Some people recommend Man and His Symbols but that's really more of a collection of 'Jungian' essays, which is interesting if you already know his work because you can see how his students developed it/ simplified it in their own practices, but isn't the best place to get Jung's ideas directly (although the first essay is his, I think).

Sadly, if your friend has the kind of disposition implied by a refusal to read primary texts and a willingness to swallow JP's snake oil, even if he managed to get through one or all of these volumes it's unlikely he would ever have the subtlety and intellectual endurance needed to actually understand what Jung meant by 'archetypes,' let alone his overall approach to psychology.

Hi Dark Knight ;)

I have experienced similar situations myself. Here's what I think about your whole predicament :

• It seems you are good at your job considering you got best performer award & on site opportunity. So I don't think you are useless.
  
  
• Also you are working on a startup & already you have got a funding! That's commendable! So you are not nothing.
  
  
• I am assuming you have a package of 3L+ which is a sufficient income for most unless you are a materialistic person who can't do away with ac, gold class seats & branded jeans. Money buys you comfort not happiness.
  
  
• Regarding misbehaving incident, you know you are innocent & your bosses have not thrown you out, so don't worry about it. Specially what others think of you. People have short long memory & with new scandal you will be forgotten quite rapidly. Look at all the politicians, cricketers & filmstars!
  
  
• You can search for new job as well if the work & the work environment is not stimulating. Also try for another state or metro. You will get some distance from your parents, you will get new experience & exposure in new city, new people & culture. It will take your mind of these current issues & you will come out mature & self-reliant.
  
  
• You are confused about further carrier direction as well. Stay in same industry, start your own business or IAS? Practically speaking you should get more experience in one industry first. Simultaneously you can work on IAS preparation or startup (but not both). After few years you will have more experience, options & clarity. On the other hand you have only 1 life & you should not waste your years doing the things you don't love.
  
  
• It's secondary what your parents expect of you or whether you will be able to crack the IAS exam. What's important is what really excites you? What are your values? What is important to you in long term?
  
  
• Your parents want you to be an IAS. So somewhere in their head they know that you have a potential, that you are smart. I dont think they really think you are useless, they probably want you to do more, be more. Ofcourse it's not right of them to pressurise you into any carrier choice, marriage choice etc. You need to sit & clarify this to them in a civilized manner.
  
  
• It's difficult to ascertain whether your gf was intoxicated or not. But unless her friend is really chhapri (cheap), he would not have dared to grope her (knowing she is with you). As you said she had ignored his lewd messages previous, that might have sent him wrong idea. But I hope she had told you about those messages before this incident otherwise it was definitely wrong on her part to hide such important issue from her bf.
  
  
• Trust is important. But none of us are Saints. What is important is to acknowledge your mistakes & not to repeat them. Fool me ones, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me! So meet her, explain your situation like a gentleman but make it clear that henceforth you expect complete & upfront honesty. And from that day onwards, never utter a word about it.
  
  
• Long distance relationships are difficult to maintain & if there are trust issues then it's just a daily frustration, continuous snooping & tons of fights. If you delay the marriage & you are still in different cities, fighting against each other & with parents then it will only be an excruciating mess.
  
  
• When you get cheated on but decide to forgive the other person it often results into a snooping sort of thing. And it's quite natural if you think about it. One fine day, your brain suddenly got the shock of its life & it was painful to say the least. Now he doesn't want to go through similar ordeal again, so he goes into this super cautious mode & tries to verify every data, every odd occurrence. It assigns meaning where there is none & sees a face even in the shadows. Isn't it like getting bitten by a dog! But the good news is that you can curb your anxiety by clarifying this to your brain. Tell him that if she is lying then that would be the end of this relation & he need not worry. If she isn't lying then thats a good thing & he need not worry. Conclusion: Don't worry, be happy & brave. And yes, you are not a psychopath!
  
  
• You are young, you have health, education, job, financial stability, family & a gf. Yes, few of these variables are not perfect but atleast they are there. If you throw your problems in a basket where everyone threw their problems then you would quickly take back yours. Suffering is not the problem, it's a part of life. Suffering without meaning is the issue. Nietzsche said, “He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How.” It's not what happens to you but what you 'think' happed, matters. If so then these problems are rather opportunities in disguise to take hard decisions, to find your meaning of life & to grow further.
  
  
• Tell me, if all your problems are solved within 3 months, will you still like to end your life? That is, if you have a new job, away from the house & probably a new gf, will you still find this life unbearable? What I am trying to say is, you are frustrated not because life in general sucks but because you haven't been able to glimpse at the solutions to your particular problems. Don't run away from the problems, run towards solutions. That's what engineers do, we solve problems!
  
  
• Empty mind is Devils paradise. You need to get busy. Start reading & exercising daily. This will rejuvenate your mind & body. I can't stress enough on exercise. If I skip 2 days, I start feeling low. Don't waste too much time on a gf who may or may not be honest, with whom you may or may not have future. Soulful conversations, jokes, romance is healthy utilization of time. Checking out last seen, fb pics, dress regulation, movement regulation, analysing every word & smilie is equal to eventual self destruction. Decide today to say, 'Fk it. I am above these silly games'. If you love someone set them free, if they come back they are yours but if they don't, they never were.
  
  
• I don't know how reliable online personality tests are. Actually you seemed opposite to narcissistic to me considering you are so concerned about everyone else in your life. In any case, you must get an appointment with a psychologist. This will give you an opportunity to fully open up & share your problems. Doctor can guide you better than us. It's not very costly either. You can expect about 500 to 1000Rs per visit for an average doctor.
  
  
• Finally, let me leave you with this famous couplet. It reminds me to become stronger version of my self everyday. (Note: I am atheist, I refer God mentioned here only in literary sense.)
  
  " ख़ुदी को कर बुलंद इतना कि हर तक़दीर से पहले ।
  
  ख़ुदा बंदे से ख़ुद पूछे बता तेरी रज़ा क्या है ।।" (इक़्बाल)
  
  " Make yourself so strong that before every destiny, God asks you, tell me what you want "
  
   
  
  Check out these books. These are all Amazon India links. But if you can't buy them now, there are free EPUB versions of every book mentioned below :
  
  
• Important life lessons : It's an online article that enlists 100 simple life lessons
  
  
• A man's search for meaning : Account of a survivor of Auschwitz
  
  
• Authentic Happiness : Cognitive Behaviour Therapy which is often given by psychologist to a depressed individual
  
  
• The mindful way through depression : How mindfulness meditation can be useful against depression, along with CBT
  
  
• The Willpower instinct : How to create habits using willpower, useful to create stronger self control demanded by tough times
  
   
  
  Summery : Don't worry friend, this too shall pass. It always does! Be brave, its a daily choice. Try to focus on solving problems one by one. Get professional help at the earliest. Invest time in things that will help you in long term. Exercise & read everyday. And always remember "All izz welll..!"
  
  

Until more recently, it wasn't common to find books/articles on "how to do" psychoanalytic psychotherapy. The knowledge of how to perform the therapy came from the therapist's training analysis, which, going back to Freud, used to be the only requirement for becoming a psychoanalyst (cf. The question of Lay Analysis by Freud). However, there are now some "psychodynamic" therapies that provide a "how to" look at therapy using psychoanalytic principles. Two that I am familiar with are Intensive Short Term Dynamic Psychotherapy or ISTDP and Brief Dynamic Therapywhich is a little better in my opinion. Glen Gabbard, who I like a lot, has also written a text that lays out some of the basics of psychotherapy from an analytic perspective.

Speaking of Gabbard, I highly recommend his text Psychodynamic Psychiatry in Clinical Practice. It provides an overview of some of the major psychoanalytic theories (drive, ego, object, self). Unfortunately he doesn't cover Lacan, and briefly touches on intersubjectivity. Another book in this vein (without the diagnostic applications) is Freud and Beyond by Stephen Mitchell and Margaret Black. Not to diminish Dr. Black, but Stephen Mitchell is really great. I recommend anything by him, especially Hope and Dread in Psychoanalysis and Relationality.

Finally, any recommendation on contemporary American psychoanalytic writing would be incomplete without mentioning Thomas Ogden, especially The Matrix of the Mind and The Primitive Edge of Experience. His more recent works are great as well, but a little more nebulous and might be less applicable to beginning psychoanalytic work.

Oh, and I can't help but recommend this little book by Owen Renik Practical Psychoanalysis. Renik is great, and I really enjoy is work, especially his thinking on "getting real in psychoanalysis." Though he is far from the traditional views of analytic neutrality and abstinence.

Allow me to elaborate. First, I don't think you're crazy. Second, /u/mukatona missed it, mine was an abuse of superlatives, not hyperbole, and I will roll back on it (slightly) right here...


When I defend my interest in JBP to people like my friend who is a tenured professor of philosophy—and no fool, believe me—I tell him that what he sees as obscurantism, I see as a kind of faulty grandiloquent style. You can be sure this wins me little more than a fluttery eye-roll. Regardless, that's how I tend to take it. I have, after all, gone very deep with Mr. Dr. P. and know that he is both unfairly maligned and does not come off well in excerpt. I found him in 2016 and have since clocked the majority of his vids. Let that serve as non-troll bona-fides.


It's worth wondering, however, why someone who likes to think of himself as being "very careful with his words" (remember the bitter tone with which that statement was made.) Finds it necessary to over-state every claim he makes. It is, much like my original post, a tactic for getting attention, more than it is a means to illuminate. Why, for example, has he found it necessary to proclaim this radical us/them divide? It simply can't be the case that there is a unified cabal of bloody neo-marxist postmodernist goons over-running academia. There are a hundred ways to discuss the truth contained within his observation without calling for war, as he did when he floated the idea of making a list of offending professors. I mean, how Stalinist can you get? It's just a good thing he's got some friends who talked him down from that insane idea.


There is a pattern that he is falling into that deserves to be noticed. That is the pattern of the charismatic guru. (Frankly, this sub reinforces that pattern all too often with sycophantic defensiveness and political shibboleths) To anyone interested in what this pattern looks like, I highly recommend the book Feet of Clay, by Anthony Storr. (He also wrote a book about Jung, so you might have other reasons to be interested in Storr.
https://www.amazon.com/Feet-Clay-Anthony-Storr/dp/0684834952/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8


Now, one thing that JBP does not do is claim to be the unique pathway to salvation, thank goodness, but he does use exaggeration to make prosaic common sense sound like profound wisdom and that is what I am criticizing here.


The guys over at Rebel Wisdom had a chat about this and give a more sympathetic complaint about the some of the same issues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0AY8pyzWAE


Peterson would do well, in my opinion, to cool it down and make some explicit arguments in the tempered fashion of an academic rather than the rabble rousing temperament of a cult leader.

Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious

>Trust your hunches, for intuition does have an underlying rationale, according to this accessible account from a German scientist of human cognition. Permeated with everyday scenarios, such as picking stocks, schools, or spouses, the book adopts an evolutionary perspective of how people act on the basis of incomplete information (usually successfully). He sets the table with an example of a baseball player pursuing a fly ball, who relies not on conscious calculation but on an evolved "gaze heuristic" to make the catch. Definitions of such rules of thumb dot the text, which Gigerenzer embeds amid his presentations of studies that indicate, for example, that financial analysts don't predict markets any better than partially informed amateurs. Explaining this as an outcome of a "recognition heuristic," Gigerenzer argues that knowing a little rather than everything about something is sufficient to take action on it. He forges on into medicine, law, and moral behavior, succeeding in the process in converting a specialized topic into a conduit for greater self-awareness among his readers. Taylor, Gilbert

It is a fact that people use their emotions that are fixed by life experience to make decisions. If one is going to deal with life factually that fact is one to take into account.

A large reason the right is so successful is that they do not cry about people being this way, ("If only people would learn to trust logic over feelings.") They use it. If the left is not willing to use it out of some sense of moral/intellectual superiority it will be stomped into the ground.

No matter how much education you pour into people in the end they will still be people and still act like people -- especially in herds.

Edit: spelling

What you're talking about is more or less in line with a psychoanalytic / Jungian interpretation. There's a lot of history and some disagreement^1, but generally the idea is that religion was instituted to codify morality into an easy-to-digest way (ie, making up stories that teach us how to behave morally) and to give a general model of human behavior and interaction, a sort of primitive social science.

I'm coming mostly from Carl Jung (Text 1 / Text 2 / Wiki), Jacques Lacan (Text / Wiki), Joseph Campbell (Text / Wiki), and Erich Fromm (Text / Wiki), but these anthologies give a decent scope of study: Ways of Being Religious and Religion, Society and Psychoanalysis.

There's also an entire sub-genre of what amount to self-help books based on mythology, interpreting myths to teach you how to be a better person: Myths to Live By, Iron John.


^1 One of the big disagreements between Freud and Jung was the role of religion in the mind of a subject. Freud believed it was a fantasy we use to bolster our own sense of importance and impart some sense of order onto the world that isn't there. Jung believed, while that may be true of fundamentalists or the neurotic/pathological, generally speaking it was a positive thing, that it created or strengthened social bonds, that it taught us things about ourselves and humanity.

Have you searched on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy?

See, e.g., this article on Śāntarakṣita:

>There are two primary areas where we find Yogācāra ideas incorporated into Śāntarakṣita's thought: his presentation of conventional truths where he describes them as being of the nature of consciousness, and his conventional acceptance of self-cognizing consciousness or reflexive awareness.

>One of the fundamental tenets of the Yogācāra/Cittamātra schools of Buddhist thought is the assertion that phenomena are not of an utterly distinct nature from consciousness. The pan-Mahāyāna idea of emptiness is in fact described in this way Yogācāras/Cittamātras, by claiming that emptiness refers to an object's lack of a nature that is distinct from the consciousness perceiving it. This is contrasted with the common Madhyamaka description of emptiness as referring to an object's lack or emptiness of its own nature or essence in and of itself. Śāntarakṣita incorporates this Yogācāra line of thinking into his presentation of conventional truths when he writes in the ninety-first stanza of MA [Śāntarakṣita's Madhyamakālaṃkāravṛtti :

That which is cause and result is mere consciousness only.
Whatever is established by itself abides in consciousness.

------------------------

The Theory of Two Truths in India:

>The central thesis in the Yogācāra philosophy, the theory of the two truths echoes this, is the assertion that all that is conventionally real is only ideas, representations, images, creations of the mind, and that there is no conventionally real object that exists outside the mind to which it corresponds. These ideas are the only objects of any cognition. The whole universe is a mental universe. All physical objects are only fiction, they are unreal even by the conventional standard, similar to a dream, a mirage, a magical illusion, where what we perceive are only products of our mind, without a real external existence.

...

>Yogācāra therefore concludes that we cannot postulate the reality of an external object through direct perception. However since in perceptual cognition we are directly aware of something, there must be an intentional object of the perceptual cognition. That intentional object of the perceptual cognition is, according to Yogācāra, none other than the subliminal impressions (vāsanās) passing from their latent state contained in the storehouse consciousness (ālayavijñāna) to their conscious level. Therefore the impressions are the only things that are conventionally real.

---------------

I don't know what this has to do with Western Psychology though.

-----------

Actually, you could probably compare pretty easily Western Psychological concepts of collective subconscious to the Yogacarin concept of ālaya-vijñāna.

Look for similarities between the Yogacarin take on the Two Truths Doctrine and the "Dual Aspect" approach of Jung and Pauli.

>In Jung's depth psychology it is crucial that the unconscious has a collective component, unseparated between individuals and consisting of the so-called archetypes. They are regarded as constituting the psychophysically neutral level covering both the collective unconscious and the holistic reality of quantum theory. At the same time they operate as “ordering factors”, being responsible for the arrangement of their psychical and physical manifestations in the epistemically distinguished domains of mind and matter.

Titus Burckhardt - Alchemy: Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul

Jung - Psychology and Alchemy

Jung - Alchemical Studies

Samael Aun Weor - The Perfect Matrimony: The Door to Enter into Initiation, Tantra and Sexual Alchemy Unveiled (don't take this guy too seriously because he's a bit of a nutter, but he is certainly worth a read)

Though it's not a book, also check out this album of images, particularly this image and this one

As for all the symbols, I highly recommend getting a dictionary of symbols and reading it straight through, from A to Z. My favorites are The Herder Dictionary of Symbols and The Element Encyclopedia of Secret Signs and Symbols.

Well, I'll be the one that gets downvoted then.

I used to read a lot of Osho and did a lot of research on him including reading several biographies by his closest people. I'm probably the only one who can claim this who wasn't one of his followers. I even tried to do a senior thesis on precisely his philosophy but found it was too large of a project or there just wasn't enough there.

I'm still a bit ambivalent about his legacy. If you go the positive route, you could argue that Osho intentionally created a religion and then let it completely go nuts and horrible as a teaching lesson. When questioned why he gathered so much wealth, he responded that Americans will only pay attention to those who are wealthy. And it's interesting to note that he would give away all his fancy gifts seemingly randomly. One week, his followers gave him pens, the next it was cars.
In his early talks, he repeatedly says you should never follow or join a religion. That if he ever created a religion, it would only be a reflection of his own truth and by secondhand for others. His defenders always point out that Sheela, his right hand woman who took over leadership, was the root of all the terrorist plots and he was kept in the dark.

But if you wanted to go the other direction, you could just as easily say that Osho was a master at hypnosis. That he had delusions of grandeur, maybe even a mental illness. That he had the biggest ego and destroyed countless lives. This book kind of goes over it:
http://www.amazon.com/Feet-Clay-Anthony-Storr/dp/0684834952

However, either way you look at it, I think he definitely did attain some higher level of consciousness. Even his ex-followers who don't like him say they got something special out of it and don't deny his higher consciousness. However "enlightenment" or whatever you want to call it doesn't necessarily preclude the possibility of doing stupid, immoral things. His books/talks reflect truth although there are some generous twists he makes on source material.

Finally, Osho like almost all spiritual teachers wouldn't qualify as what most people today call philosophy. And there are countless, arguably much better teachers with less shady pasts than this guy. The Osho foundation that exists today I think is purely a money making company.

GPs are increasingly pragmatic about these things, but it's good to have someone you trust.

I keep meaning to say to you...you should read some of Stanislav Grof's books. This is the first one I read. I'm sure you would find his work interesting.

Yes, to others ITT, and what you said OP, Psychology and Alchemy, in terms of clearest terms, but also arguably, Alchemical Studies. Jung is dense (!), but conversely also clear in moments.

If not finding the clarity in understanding sought in Jung himself some 'Post-Jungians (not strictly post in this case) work can be helpful, such as Edward F. Edingers work Anatomy of the Psyche: Alchemical Symbolism in Psychotherapy, and Maire-Louise Von Franz's Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology and Alchemical Active Imagination.

I personally found this one, one of the best introductions to the key arguments itself: https://www.amazon.de/How-Read-Lacan-Slavoj-Zizek/dp/1862078947/ref=sr_1_1?s=books-intl-de&ie=UTF8&qid=1491763225&sr=1-1&keywords=lacan+zizek

The graphic novel was quite broad and seemed to focused on the variety of his topics of interest

There's a disconnect between what women SAY they like, and what actually gets the panties wet. This is backed up by clinicians and theoreticians (even the feminists). See references:

https://www.amazon.com/Lacanian-Subject-Bruce-Fink/dp/0691015899

https://www.amazon.com/Ethics-Sexual-Difference-Luce-Irigaray/dp/0801481457/

Despite all these factors you say, maybe it's something small that actually turns you on. Say, the impertinent, unblinking way a certain guy looks at other girls.

Everything else comes into play when you're selecting a long-term mate, but I'm just talking about that visceral attraction.

Edinger's Anatomy of the Psyche may be a good read for you :)

Thanks!

>I think the coolest thing I’ve found is the evolutionary reason why people reject evolution. I haven’t published it yet but, when it comes out, its probably going to cause a minor shit storm.

Please post to reddit when it's published.

In case anyone wants to check out the above mentioned books:

Chimpanzee Politics by Frans de Waal

The Paleolithic Prescription by Boyd and Eaton

Exiles from Eden by Glantz and Pearce

Primates in the Classroom by Gary Bernhard

Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters by Miller and Kanzawa

Evolution for Everyone by David Sloan

I really like your thinking and would like to subscribe to your future thoughts. Have you looked into the subject of psychoanalysis? In particular, Lacanian psychoanalysis discusses schizophrenia as a disorder in the mental structure of metaphor and language, which may be related to your musings (for example, see http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00664/full).

Two books I recommend: A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis by Bruce Fink (https://www.amazon.com/Clinical-Introduction-Lacanian-Psychoanalysis-Technique/dp/0674135369) and Lacan by Lionel Bailly (https://www.amazon.com/Lacan-Beginners-Guide-Lionel-Bailly/dp/1851686371).

I took my PhD in a part of the country that was characteristically conservative politically and religiously. Mention of evolution was quite often more trouble than it was worth, which is an absolute shame. We didn't even mention Darwin (who seemed to be quite confident that natural selection would be applied to psychology "In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history." C. R. Darwin On the Origin of Species, 1859 p.488) who gave us the single strongest theory in the history of science because people don't like it.

Because they don't like it.

I would recommend Exiles from Eden and Evolutionary Psychiatry for the clinical application.

I would also say that EP does not claim that humans are genetic automatons. We have a range of behaviors that helped us navigate our world, but, that world has changed quite a lot in the last few centuries/millennia, far too fast for the brain to have caught of with it.

If you approach treatments from the EP perspective you might try not so much to "fix" the problem as to put a person in a situation that is closer to their comfort zone.

Of course I'm overgeneralizing here. For one I really can't give you an overview of the whole field in 150 words. And second, I'm not a clinician or therapist. Take a look at those books, I suspect it will help.

Another solid, clinically oriented, research informed recent book on psychodynamic therapy I would highly recommend is

http://www.amazon.com/Psychodynamic-Therapy-Guide-Evidence-Based-Practice/dp/1462509703/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411328511&sr=1-1&keywords=jacques+barber

https://www.amazon.com/Lacan-Beginners-Guide-Lionel-Bailly/dp/1851686371

I found that book helpful when studying lucan. He is able to explain lacans theories without over simplifying them

Even more excited to read this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/067960071X/ref=oh_details_o02_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

"Intuitions" are useful heuristics we've adapted to function in the world. They are not universally correct - in fact, they're often wrong.

"God" as an intuition is more an argument against its existence in my mind.

Edit: Fascinating book on the subject. Highly recommended for anyone.

It isn't retarded. Do some background research.

http://youtu.be/KCInjQ4omlA
http://youtu.be/bX8D0yU0pMc
http://youtu.be/C_L-k7KCPPM
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1451683405
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1862078947

You should know some Freud. Seminar XI is not that hard compared to other seminars, but it is Lacan we are talking about, so it is never that simple.

I would just start reading it, and maybe read Bruce Fink's The Lacanian Subject. You might also want to read Reading Seminar XI.

It's a book in fact, available at amazon. I think that if your google-fu is solid enough you can find a pdf elsewhere, but I haven't tried.

Things to Buy
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Portrait_of_the_Artist_as_a_Young_Man

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stream_of_consciousness_writing

http://entertainment.time.com/2011/08/30/all-time-100-best-nonfiction-books/#fast-food-nation-by-eric-schlosser

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Political
Iraq Research

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Tawhid_Wal-Jihad

http://www.ontheissues.org/Drugs.htm#Barack_Obama

Congress Related

http://thomas.loc.gov/home/r110query.html

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/vote_menu_110_1.htm

http://www.usdoj.gov/

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http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists
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http://allafrica.com/

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/??

Health & Exercise
Green Tea

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http://whfoods.org/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=146

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_tea

http://blackdragonteabar.blogspot.com/2008_09_01_archive.html

http://blackdragonteabar.blogspot.com/

https://www.itoen.com/leaf/index.cfm

http://www.maiko.ne.jp/english/

http://www.mellowmonk.com/buyGreenTea.htm
http://www.o-cha.com/home.php

http://www.denstea.com/

http://www.theteaavenue.com/chgrtea.html

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https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Writings-Jung-Modern-Library/dp/067960071X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1549645310&sr=1-1&keywords=basic+writings+of+cg+jung

https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Writings-Jung-Modern-Library/dp/067960071X

https://www.amazon.com/Jung-Evil-C-G/dp/0691026173

These are basically collections of small bits and pieces of his various works. It was a good way for me to be introduced to many different topics he writes about without being completely overwhelmed. Although don’t get discouraged if you don’t understand everything he says. In the beginning I had a lot of trouble understanding him but with practice he became life changing to me.