The Joy of Madness PDF Download

Author: Chinaza Okoli
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : African fiction (English)
Languages : en
Pages : 62

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Author: Alice Walker
Publisher: New Press/ORIM
ISBN: 1595588876
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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A poetry collection of “playful and crooning lyricism” from the National Book Award– and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Color Purple (Booklist). In this dazzling new collection, Alice Walker offers over sixty new poems to incite and nurture contemporary activists. Hailed as a “lavishly gifted writer,” Walker imbues her poetry with evocative images, fresh language, anger, forgiveness, and profound wisdom (The New York Times). Casting her eye toward history, politics, and nature, as well as to world figures such as Jimmy Carter, Gloria Steinem, and the Dalai Lama, she “distills struggles, crises, and tragedies down to bright, singing lessons in living with awareness and joy” (Booklist). By attentively chronicling the conditions of human life today, Walker shows, as ever, her deep compassion, profound spirituality, and necessary political commitments. The poems in The World Will Follow Joy remind us of our human capacity to come together and take action, even in our troubled political times. “Her spirituality, concern for human rights, and almost old-fashioned, determined joyousness run deep and her devoted readers will want to follow her as she turns ‘madness into flowers’” (Library Journal).

Author: Merri Joy
Publisher: Balboa Press
ISBN: 9781452574936
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 24

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Moments of Madness: silly words for your amusement. Merri Joy's third book, this time poetic theme.

Author: Wouter Kusters
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262044285
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 769

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Book Description
The philosophy of psychosis and the psychosis of philosophy: a philosopher draws on his experience of madness. In this book, philosopher and linguist Wouter Kusters examines the philosophy of psychosis—and the psychosis of philosophy. By analyzing the experience of psychosis in philosophical terms, Kusters not only emancipates the experience of the psychotic from medical classification, he also emancipates the philosopher from the narrowness of textbooks and academia, allowing philosophers to engage in real-life praxis, philosophy in vivo. Philosophy and madness—Kusters's preferred, non-medicalized term—coexist, one mirroring the other. Kusters draws on his own experience of madness—two episodes of psychosis, twenty years apart—as well as other first-person narratives of psychosis. Speculating about the maddening effect of certain words and thought, he argues, and demonstrates, that the steady flow of philosophical deliberation may sweep one into a full-blown acute psychotic episode. Indeed, a certain kind of philosophizing may result in confusion, paradoxes, unworldly insights, and circular frozenness reminiscent of madness. Psychosis presents itself to the psychotic as an inescapable truth and reality. Kusters evokes the mad person's philosophical or existential amazement at reality, thinking, time, and space, drawing on classic autobiographical accounts of psychoses by Antonin Artaud, Daniel Schreber, and others, as well as the work of phenomenological psychiatrists and psychologists and such phenomenologists as Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. He considers the philosophical mystic and the mystical philosopher, tracing the mad undercurrent in the Husserlian philosophy of time; visits the cloud castles of mystical madness, encountering LSD devotees, philosophers, theologians, and nihilists; and, falling to earth, finds anxiety, emptiness, delusions, and hallucinations. Madness and philosophy proceed and converge toward a single vanishing point.

Author: Claire Trenery
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351257307
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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This book explores how madness was defined and diagnosed as a condition of the mind in the Middle Ages and what effects it was thought to have on the bodies, minds and souls of sufferers. Madness is examined through narratives of miraculous punishment and healing that were recorded at the shrines of saints. This study focuses on the twelfth century, which has been identified as a ‘Medieval Renaissance’: a time of cultural and intellectual change that saw, among other things, the circulation of new medical treatises that brought with them a wealth of new ideas about illness and health. With the expanding authority of the Roman Church and the tightening of papal control over canonisation procedures in this period, historians have claimed that there was a ‘rationalisation’ of the miraculous. In miracle records, illnesses were explained using newly-accessible humoral theories rather than attributed to divine and demonic forces, as they had been previously. The first book-length study of madness in medieval religion and medicine to be published since 1992, this book challenges these claims and reveals something of the limitations of the so-called ‘medicalisation’ of the miraculous. Throughout the twelfth century, demons continue to lurk in miracle records relating to one condition in particular: madness. Five case studies of miracle collections compiled between 1070 and 1220 reveal that hagiographical representations of madness were heavily influenced by the individual circumstances of their recording and yet were shaped as much by hagiographical patterns that had been developing throughout the twelfth century as they were by new medical and theological standards.

Author: Zvi Mark
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1441169385
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Two hundred years since Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav's demise, his philosophical writings and literary creation remain lively and provocative materials in both Jewish culture and the New-Age movement. Key elements of Rabbi Nachman`s magic and magnetic force are illuminated in this research, which presents Bratslavian mysticism as a unique link in the history of Jewish mysticism. The mystical worldview is the axis of this book, but its branches stretch out to key issues in the Bratslavian world such as belief and imagination, dreams and the land of Israel, melodies and song.

Author: Bill Otto
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781087800806
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 62

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Enjoy learning about the horrors of the Great Old Ones with this coloring book!

Author: Seth Farber
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1594777039
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
A bold call for the “insane” to reclaim their rightful role as prophets of spiritual and cultural transformation • Explains how many of those diagnosed as schizophrenic, bipolar, and other forms of “madness” are not ill but experiencing a spiritual awakening • Explores the rise of Mad Pride and the mental patients’ liberation movement • Reveals how those seen as “mad” must embrace their spiritual gifts to help the coming global spiritual transition Many of the great prophets of the past experienced madness--a breakdown followed by a breakthrough, spiritual death followed by rebirth. With the advent of modern psychiatry, the budding prophets of today are captured and transformed into chronic mental patients before they can flower into the visionaries and mystics they were intended to become. As we approach the tipping point between extinction and global spiritual awakening, there is a deep need for these prophets to embrace their spiritual gifts. To make this happen, we must learn to respect the sanctity of madness. We need to cultivate Mad Pride. Exploring the rise of Mad Pride and the mental patients’ liberation movement as well as building upon psychiatrist R. D. Laing’s revolutionary theories, Seth Farber, Ph.D., explains that diagnosing people as mad has more to do with social control than therapy. Many of those labeled as schizophrenic, bipolar, and other kinds of “mad” are not ill but simply experiencing different forms of spiritual awakening: they are seeing and feeling what is wrong with society and what needs to be done to change it. Farber shares his interviews with former schizophrenics who now lead successful and inspiring lives. He shows that it is impossible for society to change as long as the mad are suppressed because they are our catalysts of social change. By reclaiming their rightful role as prophets of spiritual and cultural revitalization, the mad--by seeding new visions for our future--can help humanity overcome the spiritual crisis that endangers our survival and lead us to a higher and long-awaited stage of spiritual development.

Author: Lillian Feder
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691219737
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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To probe the literary representation of the alienated mind, Lillian Feder examines mad protagonists of literature and the work of writers for whom madness is a vehicle of self-revelation. Ranging from ancient Greek myth and tragedy to contemporary poetry, fiction, and drama, Professor Feder shows how literary interpretations of madness, as well as madness itself, reflect the very cultural assumptions, values, and prohibitions they challenge.

Author: Sylvia Huot
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780199252121
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Written by one of the leading critics in medieval studies, this new book explores the representations of madness in medieval French literature. Drawing on a range of modern psychoanalytic theories and an impressive range of texts from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, Sylvia Huot focuses on the relationship between madness and identity, both personal and collective, and demonstrates the cultural significance of madness in the Middle Ages.