Legacies of the Occult

Legacies of the Occult
Author: Marsha Aileen Hewitt
Publisher: Equinox Publishing (Indonesia)
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2020
Genre: Psychoanalysis
ISBN: 9781781792780

Telepathy, thought transference, unconscious communication. While some important early psychological theorists such as William James, Frederic W. H. Myers and Sigmund Freud all agreed that the phenomenon exists, their theoretical approaches to it were very different. James's and Myers's interpretations of and experimental investigations into telepathy or thought transference were an inextricable part of their psychical researches. Freud's insistence on the reality of thought transference had nothing to do with psychical research or paranormal phenomena, which he largely repudiated. Thought transference for Freud was located in a theory of the unconscious that was radically different from the subliminal mind embraced by James and Myers. Today thought transference is most commonly described as unconscious communication but was largely ignored by subsequent generations of psychoanalysts until most recently. Nonetheless, the recognition of unconscious communication has persisted as a subterranean, quasi-spiritual presence in psychoanalysis to this day. As psychoanalysis becomes more interested in unconscious communication and develops theories of loosely boundaried subjectivities that open up to transcendent dimensions of reality, it begins to assume the features of a religious psychology. Thus, a fuller understanding of how unconscious communication resonates with mystical overtones may be more deeply clarified, articulated and elaborated in contemporary psychoanalysis in an explicit dialogue with psychoanalytically literate scholars of religion. In Legacies of the Occult Marsha Aileen Hewitt argues that some of the leading theorists of unconscious communication represent a 'mystical turn' that is infused with both a spirituality and a revitalized interest in paranormal experience that is far closer to James and Myers than to Freud.

Revisiting the "Nazi Occult"

Revisiting the
Author: Monica Black
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2015
Genre: Germany
ISBN: 1571139060

New collection of essays promising to re-energize the debate on Nazism's occult roots and legacies and thus our understanding of German cultural and intellectual history over the past century.

Occult Imperium

Occult Imperium
Author: Christian Giudice
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2022-02-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 0197610242

Christian Giudice's Occult Imperium explores Italian national forms of Occultism, chiefly analyzing Arturo Reghini (1878-1946), his copious writings, and Roman Traditionalism. Trained as a mathematician at the prestigious University of Pisa, Reghini was one of the three giants of occult and esoteric thought in Italy, alongside his colleagues Julius Evola (1898-1974) and Giulian Kremmerz (1861-1930). Using Reghini's articles, books, and letters, as a guide, Giudice explores the interaction between occultism, Traditionalism, and different facets of modernity in early-twentieth-century Italy. The book takes into consideration many factors particular to the Italian peninsula: the ties with avant-garde movements such as the Florentine Scapigliatura and Futurism, the occult vogues typical to Italy, the rise to power of Benito Mussolini and Fascism, and, lastly, the power of the Holy See over different expressions of spirituality. Occult Imperium explores the convergence of new forms of spirituality in early twentieth-century Italy.

The Superhumanities

The Superhumanities
Author: Jeffrey J. Kripal
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2022-09-23
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0226820254

A bold challenge to rethink the humanities as intimately connected to the superhuman and to “decolonize reality itself.” What would happen if we reimagined the humanities as the superhumanities? If we acknowledged and celebrated the undercurrent of the fantastic within our humanistic disciplines, entirely new cultural worlds and meanings would become possible. That is Jeffrey J. Kripal’s vision for the future—to revive the suppressed dimension of the superhumanities, which consists of rare but real altered states of knowledge that have driven the creative processes of many of our most revered authors, artists, and activists. In Kripal’s telling, the history of the humanities is filled with precognitive dreams, evolving superhumans, and doubled selves. The basic idea of the superhuman, for Kripal, is at the core of who and what the human species has tried to become over millennia and around the planet. After diagnosing the basic malaise of the humanities—that the truth must be depressing—Kripal shows how it can all be done differently. He argues that we have to decolonize reality itself if we are going to take human diversity seriously. Toward this pluralist end, he engages psychoanalytic, Black critical, feminist, postcolonial, queer, and ecocritical theory. He works through objections to the superhumanities while also recognizing the new realities represented by the contemporary sciences. In doing so, he tries to move beyond naysaying practices of critique toward a future that can embrace those critiques within a more holistic view—a view that recognizes the human being as both a social-political animal as well as an evolved cosmic species that understands and experiences itself as something super.

The Jewish Thought and Psychoanalysis Lectures

The Jewish Thought and Psychoanalysis Lectures
Author: Harvey Schwartz
Publisher: Phoenix Publishing House
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2020-02-01
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1912691248

Freud’s relationship with his Judaism – his by virtue of his self- description as a “fanatical Jew” – was framed by two of his convictions. He was centered both by his passionate cultural affiliation and by his atheism. Within these internal guideposts lay a Jewish life layered by tensions, pleasures, and identifications. His creation – psychoanalysis – has labored to honor its Jewish influences. Recent studies of these insights have contributed to the current interest in listening more carefully to the individual meanings of analysands’ religious life.This lecture series was designed to introduce to the public both the similarities and the differences between the psychoanalytic and the Jewish world views. The contributors are among the thought leaders of our generation who work at the interface of the intrapsychic and religious states of mind. We learn how each has influenced the other and perhaps how each has been enriched by the other.A tour de force delving into the influence of Freud’s Jewish roots on the development of psychoanalysis.

Desire After Dark

Desire After Dark
Author: Andrew J. Owens
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2021-03-02
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0253053846

Since the 1960s, the occult in film and television has responded to and reflected society's crises surrounding gender and sexuality. In Desire After Dark, Andrew J. Owens explores media where figures such as vampires and witches make use of their supernatural knowledge in order to queer what otherwise appears to be a normative world. Beginning with the global sexual revolutions of the '60s and moving decade by decade through "Euro-sleaze" cinema and theatrical hardcore pornography, the HIV/AIDS crisis, the popularity of New Age religions and witchcraft, and finally the increasingly explicit sexualization of American cable television, Owens contends that occult media has risen to prominence during the past 60 years as a way of exposing and working through cultural crises about queerness. Through the use of historiography and textual analyses of media from Bewitched to The Hunger, Owens reveals that the various players in occult media have always been well aware that non-normative sexuality constitutes the heart of horror's enduring appeal. By investigating vampirism, witchcraft, and other manifestations of the supernatural in media, Desire After Dark confirms how the queer has been integral to the evolution of the horror genre and its persistent popularity as both a subcultural and mainstream media form.

The Legacies of Richard Popkin

The Legacies of Richard Popkin
Author: Jeremy D. Popkin
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2008-11-05
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1402084749

Richard H. Popkin (1923-2005) transformed the study of the history of philosophy in the second half of the twentieth century. His History of Scepticism and his many other publications demonstrated the centrality of the problem of skepticism in the development of modern thought, the intimate connections between philosophy and religion, and the importance of contacts between Jewish and Christian thinkers. In this volume, scholars from around the world assess Popkin’s contributions to the many fields in which he was interested. The Legacies of Richard Popkin provides a broad overview of Popkin’s work and demonstrates the connections between the many topics he wrote about. A concluding article, by Popkin’s son Jeremy Popkin, draws on private letters to provide a picture of Popkin’s life and career in his own words, revealing the richness of the documents now accessible to scholars in the Richard Popkin papers at the William Andrews Clark Library in Los Angeles.

Atlantis

Atlantis
Author: John Michael Greer
Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2007
Genre: Atlantis (Legendary place)
ISBN: 0738709786

Traces the legend of Atlantis from the original stories found in the works of Plato to the latest scientific debates and discoveries, and argues that the threat of global warming may lead modern society to the same fate.

Tristan's Shadow

Tristan's Shadow
Author: Adrian Daub
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2013-11-25
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 022608227X

Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, and Siegfried. Parsifal. Tristan und Isolde. Both revered and reviled, Richard Wagner conceived some of the nineteenth century’s most influential operas—and created some of the most indelible characters ever to grace the stage. But over the course of his polarizing career, Wagner also composed volumes of essays and pamphlets, some on topics seemingly quite distant from the opera house. His influential concept of Gesamtkunstwerk—the “total work of art”—famously and controversially offered a way to unify the different media of an opera into a coherent whole. Less well known, however, are Wagner’s strange theories on sexuality—like his ideas about erotic acoustics and the metaphysics of sexual difference. Drawing on the discourses of psychoanalysis, evolutionary biology, and other emerging fields of study that informed Wagner’s thinking, Adrian Daub traces the dual influence of Gesamtkunstwerk and eroticism from their classic expressions in Tristan und Isolde into the work of the generation of composers that followed, including Zemlinsky, d’Albert, Schreker, and Strauss. For decades after Wagner’s death, Daub writes, these composers continued to grapple with his ideas and with his overwhelming legacy, trying in vain to write their way out from Tristan’s shadow.

Limpopo's Legacy

Limpopo's Legacy
Author: Anne Heffernan
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2019
Genre: History
ISBN: 1847012175

Argues that the historical primacy of youth politics in Limpopo, South Africa has influenced the production of generations of nationally prominent youth and student activists - among them Julius Malema, Onkgopotse Tiro, Cyril Ramaphosa, Frank Chikane, and Peter Mokaba.