Lexington Books
Pages: 244
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9½
978-1-4985-2028-7 • Hardback • April 2016 • $129.00 • (£99.00)
978-1-4985-2030-0 • Paperback • May 2018 • $55.99 • (£43.00)
978-1-4985-2029-4 • eBook • April 2016 • $53.00 • (£41.00)
Brian J. McVeigh holds a PhD from Princeton University and is now training to be a mental health counselor.
Foreword
Acknowledgments and Notes to Reader
Prologue - Explaining History's “Inward Turn”
– Chapter 1 - My Search for Heaven and Hell
– Chapter 2 - Purposes and Premises: Tracing the Trajectories of Human Experience
– Chapter 3 - The Magic of Metaphors: How Our Minds Make the World
– Chapter 4 - Unpacking the “Black Box” of Conscious Interiority
Part One - Space: Hollowing Out the Person
– Chapter 5 - Envisioning the Invisible: Spatializing the Soul
– Chapter 6 - Invoking Introspectable Worlds
– Chapter 7 - The Collapse of Premodern Cosmology
Part Two - Psyche: The Origins of Scientific Psychology
– Chapter 8 - The Foundations of the Modern Study of Mind
– Chapter 9 - The Great Cosmic Split: Dualism
– Chapter 10 - Reactions to the Cartesian Split
– Chapter 11 - Early Psychology: Making Visible the Contents of the Soul
Part Three - Time: Modern Millenarianism and Politics as “Progress”
– Chapter 12 - Meta-Framing Time: The Invention of History
– Chapter 13 - Liberating the Psyche: The Emerging Faith in Progress
– Chapter 14 - The History of Humankind: Climbing the Ladder of Civilization
– Chapter 15 - Envisaging the Future as Paradise
Part Four - Self: Turning the World Inside Out
– Chapter 16 - The Changeable Self through the Centuries
– Chapter 17 - The Narratized Individual as Social Actor
– Chapter 18 - The Self as Mirror in Historical Perspective
– Chapter 19 - The Birth of Modern Psychology
Epilogue - Visualizing New Vistas of Modernity and Selfhood
– Chapter 20 - The Therapeutic Turn
– Chapter 21 - Self-Idolatry: The Dark Side of the Psychotherapeutic Society
– Chapter 22 - Modern Spatiality, the Soul, and the Psyche
Appendix A: How to Open the “Black Box”: Cultural Psychology
Appendix B: What Conscious Interiority Is Not
Appendix C: Spaces: Real and Imaginary
Appendix D: The Visible, Invisible, and Introspectable
References
Index
About the Author
Brian McVeigh extends Jaynes’s ideas on metaphor and thought, expands upon the different features of consciousness, explains the interrelatedness of our conceptions of time, space, and the self, and explores some of the implications of our newly learned inner life—the consequences of our consciousness. His ideas constitute a significant step forward to both understanding the metaphorical basis of thought and the human condition.
— Marcel Kuijsten, Julian Jaynes Society
McVeigh’s Psychohistory traces in detail the development of introspection, augmenting the ideas of Julian Jaynes. He explains how and why introspection developed in all its variations. He presents a well-documented history of this development in its cultural contexts. This is one of the books Jaynes said needed to be written. It provides a fascinating history of the often confusing and rarely documented cultural evolution of human consciousness. A must-read for scholars of history of the mind and Julian Jaynes.
— John F. Hainly, Southern University
McVeigh extends the work of the psychologist Julian Jaynes by revealing the close coupling between the character of the interior self and the ever-changing social context . . . A Psychohistory of Metaphors is a welcome and important contribution to our understanding of the conscious narrative self. But beyond its standing as an invaluable resource, it is also a pleasure to read. With personal stories of McVeigh’s childhood wonderings about the locations of heaven and hell, for example, seamlessly woven into texts of academic excellence, the book is as engaging as it is informative. With such depth and commitment to scholarship, this book promises to be a source of continual surprises and understandings over multiple readings. It is one of those books to keep close by on the shelf for many years to come.
— Bill Rowe, Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics