Maps of Meaning

From the author of 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos comes a provocative hypothesis that explores the connection between what modern neuropsychology tells us about the brain and what rituals, myths, and religious stories have long narrated.

Why have people from different cultures and eras formulated myths and stories with similar structures? What does this similarity tell us about the mind, morality, and structure of the world itself? From the author of 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos comes a provocative hypothesis that explores the connection between what modern neuropsychology tells us about the brain and what rituals, myths, and religious stories have long narrated. A cutting-edge work that brings together neuropsychology, cognitive science, and Freudian and Jungian approaches to mythology and narrative, Maps of Meaning presents a rich theory that makes the wisdom and meaning of myth accessible to the critical modern mind.

"The book reflects its author's profound moral sense and vast erudition in areas ranging from clinical psychology to scripture and a good deal of personal soul-searching and experience...with patients who include prisoners, alcoholics and the mentally ill." -- Montreal Gazette
"This is not a book to be abstracted and summarized. Rather it should be read at leisure...and employed as a stimulus and reference to expand one's own maps of meaning. I plan to return to Peterson's musings and mapping many times over the next few years." -- Am J Psychiatry
"...a brilliant enlargement of our understanding of human motivation...a beautiful work." -- Sheldon H. White, Harvard University
"...unique...a brilliant new synthesis of the meaning of mythologies and our human need to relate in story form the deep structure of our experiences." -- Keith Oatley, University of Toronto

Autorentext

Jordan B. Peterson is a clinical psychologist and Professor at the University of Toronto and was formerly at Harvard University. He has published numerous articles on drug abuse, alcoholism and aggression.

Inhalt

Preface: Descensus ad Inferos

1. Maps of Experience: Object and Meaning

2. Maps of Meaning: Three Levels of Analysis
   Normal and Revolutionary**Life: Two Prosaic Stories
   Neuropsychological Function:**The Nature of the Mind
   Mythological Representation:The**Constitutent Elements of Experience

3. Apprenticeship and Enculturation: Adoption of a Shared Map

4. The Appearance of Anomaly: Challenge to the Shared Map
   Introduction: The Paradigmatic Structure of**the Known
   Particular Forms of Anomaly
   The Rise ofSelf-Reference, and the Permanent Contamination ofAnomaly with Death

5. The Hostile Brothers: Archetypes of Response to the Unknown
   Introduction:**The Hero and the Adversary
   The Adversary: Emergence,**Development and Representation
   Heroic Adaptation:Voluntary Reconstruction of the Map ofMeaning
   Conclusion: The Divinity of Interest