Illusion: A Psychodynamic Interpretation of Thinking and Belief

New
Paperback
2000
$54.69

The ways we know, think and believe about a whole variety of key areas - different forms of discourse, psychotherapy as well as religion - have much more in common than is usually perceived. In preference to Freud's idea that illusions are the expression of wish-fulfilment, the author of this study uses Winnicott's concept of illusion, as a life-long, ever-changing way of coping with the anxiety of gaps and space. Through a series of parallels running across different disciplines, Michael Jacobs demonstrates the possible analysis of modes of thinking and belief, from intuitive pre-thinking, through authority-driven thinking and belief, and personal and polymathic knowledge, to un-knowing, the last concept being one that is shared by Bion, Winnicott and a major mystical tradition. Using this theoretical model the book provides a map to how clients (and indeed therapists) might think and believe, suggesting ways in which they may be supported as they shift through different modes, with all the anxiety that disillusionment brings.

Synopsis

The ways we know, think and believe about a whole variety of key areas - different forms of discourse, psychotherapy as well as religion - have much more in common than is usually perceived. In preference to Freud's idea that illusions are the expression of wish-fulfilment, the author of this study uses Winnicott's concept of illusion, as a life-long, ever-changing way of coping with the anxiety of gaps and space. Through a series of parallels running across different disciplines, Michael Jacobs demonstrates the possible analysis of modes of thinking and belief, from intuitive pre-thinking, through authority-driven thinking and belief, and personal and polymathic knowledge, to un-knowing, the last concept being one that is shared by Bion, Winnicott and a major mystical tradition. Using this theoretical model the book provides a map to how clients (and indeed therapists) might think and believe, suggesting ways in which they may be supported as they shift through different modes, with all the anxiety that disillusionment brings.

$54.69

Quantity

20+ in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 154
Publisher: Wiley–Blackwell
Published: 15 Oct 2000
ISBN 10: 1861562098
ISBN 13: 9781861562098

Author Bio

Michael Jacobs is Visiting Professor in the School of Public Policy at University College London. An environmental economist and political theorist, his work has focused on the political economy of environmental change. His books include The Green Economy: Environment, Sustainable Development and the Politics of the Future, Greening the Millennium? The New Politics of the Environment - ed, Blackwell, 1997 -, The Politics of the Real World and Paying for Progress: A New Politics of Tax for Public Spending - Fabian Society 2000 -. From 2004-10 he was a Special Adviser to the UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, responsible for domestic and international policy on environment, energy and climate change, and before that a member of the Council of Economic Advisers at the UK Treasury. He was formerly General Secretary of the Fabian Society, Co-Editor of The Political Quarterly and a research fellow at Lancaster University and the London School of Economics. He has also been a Visiting Professor at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the LSE, a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research and Senior Adviser to the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, which he helped to found.