Down The Rabbit Hole {module_logout}
In Search of the Authentic Self: The Theory and Practice of Higher Psychology
In Search of the Authentic Self: The Theory and Practice of Higher Psychology (2013) is an e-book based on the theory and practice of humanistic and transpersonal thought and is anatomically divided to reflect this dichotomy. The first part covers individual philosophies and psychotherapeutic methods utilized by some its foremost thinkers [Abraham Maslow and ‘peak’ experiences, Roberto Assagioli and his personality-developmental model termed psychosynthesis, Carl Jung and active imagination, and Arnold Mindell and his concept of the ‘dreambody’] along with humanistic perspectives on mental illness, the role of personal mythology in healing, the mind-body synergy in healing, and past-life regression.
The second part divulges psychological and spiritual techniques that can be used by anybody for the purpose of leading a more authentic and inwardly-gratifying life. Here you will learn how to read and correctly interpret the intercourse of the psychic and somatic unconscious, a phenomenon reflective of the present condition of your soul. You will also learn how to correctly interpret your dreams; how to attain lucidity; how to read body language; and how to expunge subtle apprehensions or irrational fears from your life. Included are a host of meditation, creative visualization, and guided fantasy exercises for relaxation, spiritual ascent, and descent into the unconscious.
Perspectives on the History of Dissociation
The conceptual parameters of what constitutes dissociative processes along with dissociative experiences and functions have undergone significant changes since their inception in the eighteenth century. Scrying the evolution of dynamic psychiatry over the last three hundred years, it appears that the concept of dissociation originally referred to posttraumatic divisions of integrative functioning or alterations of consciousness which later evolved to encompass nonpathological, hypnotically-induced variants like daydreaming. Originally, then, dissociation adhered to psychopathological denominations that imbued it with a conceptual clarity which was lost when diagnostic criteria for the phenomenon altered to include any integrative breakdown, pathological or not. Freud, for instance, reinterpreted dissociation under his repression model of ego defence against traumatic childhood memories.
The study traces both alterations in the understanding of what constitutes dissociation and the psychological phenomena to which it refers from Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815) in the eighteenth century through to Ken Wilber (1949- ) in the twenty-first century, detailing how these innovations or lack thereof have affected the application of developmental theories to clinical practice in the psychiatric arena. Special emphasis is given to Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) or Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), the severest form of dissociative multiplicity. Finally, a modern child of Western esotericism–the psychosynthesis model of human development pioneered by the Italian psychiatrist Roberto Assagioli (1888-1974)–is used to interpret a famous contemporary case of DID detailed in the book Switching Time: A Doctor’s Harrowing Story of Treating A Woman with Seventeen Personalities (2008) by Richard Baer.
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Dreamscaping Without my Timekeeper
Dreaming Without My Timekeeper: A Critical Investigation into Precognitive Dreams is a comprehensive study into the precognitive faculty and its implications from a transpersonal perspective. Through the transcription, categorization, and analysis of fifty-one dream fragments belonging to fifteen participants, the author and experimenter Dr. Paul Kiritsis establishes a strong case for precognition as an authentic and ‘normative’ aspect of human consciousness. He then utilizes the repository of experiences to make nine overarching extrapolations which assist in placing this ‘psi’ phenomenon within an appropriate theoretical framework–incidentally the spectrum of consciousness developed by theorist Ken Wilber (b. 1949). Save for three introductory articles which investigate aberrations to the perception of time incurred by precognitive dreams, the exposition also comes replete with a glossary and references for further reading, an index, and a fictional narrative inexplicable connected with dreams and the notion of time. The latter features a fresh and modern interpretation of Pandora’s Box, a Hellenic myth in which the first woman, Pandora, opens a storage jar entrusted to her by the Olympians that contained all the ills, disasters, and misfortunes set to befall humankind.
The Black Art
The Black Art (2013), the fourth e-book, contains all of my work on the subject of alchemy, including the following: a lucid presentation on the formative principles (the four elements, the seven planets and metals, and the tria primaunio mystica with the transpersonal or true Self); the cosmographical implications of the last four plates of the Splendor Solis; and an in-depth expose of the alchemical stages as a psychological process.
From Apples to Aphrodite
The e-book From Apples to Aphrodite (2013) covers most of my earlier work on Hellenistic history and culture and includes articles that were written for the “It’s all Greek to me” blog tour held at www.evolver.net in mid-2011. The work is divided into five specific sections, all of which are orientated towards a different aspect of Hellenism. The first section deals with the historical and mythological substrate from whence Hellenistic thought actually sprung (including expositions on the Greek gods and goddesses); the second with the mysterious Minoan civilization which flourished on Crete until about the Late Bronze Age; the third with the rich, interwoven tapestry of Hellenism’s folkloristic and mythological fabric (i.e. classical eschatological ideas about the afterlife, nymphs, vampires, kallikantzaroi, and so forth); the fourth with the ideas, philosophies, and lives of two prominent esoteric thinkers (Plato and Pythagoras); and the fifth with pre-eminent esoteric ideas that germinated from Hellenic consciousness and came to dominate Western modes of thought.
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