R Books

Well please, I got just what they said. The book is well written, easy to apply-thanks.

The book, "Twelve Essential Skills for Great Preaching" is an excellent book for student ministers, lay persons and even seasoned ministers. We can all learn some valuable tips and "essential skills" on how to improve our preaching and by so doing remove boredom from our congregations and encourage and motivate all audiences in strengthening their faith in the Gospel of jesus Christ. This book will assist us to enliven our messages and communicate far better with our community of believers.

With a desire to provide a "skills development approach" for training in the art and science of preaching, Dr. Wayne McDill pens a volume that aims to "identify and strengthen the specific skills needed for more effective sermon preparation" (ix). McDill serves as professor of preaching at the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina. He has over forty years of experience as a pastor, denominational leader,
and a teacher of homiletics and is the author of numerous books, including Evangelism in a Tangled World, Becoming Who You Are, Making Friends for Christ, and The Message.

McDill contends that there are twelve essential skills to help preachers provide more and better content in their sermons. While he observes that God calls and His preachers, we have the responsibility to develop these specific skills through "discipline, hard work, and a commitment to clear thinking and Bible-based sermons" (15). He notes that:

This book is designed with a self-improvement format, a do-it-yourself approach which will let you concentrate on your own skills, at your own pace, and in the areas you see need to be strengthened (7).

Summary

McDill presents the first skill for great preaching in that the preacher must "get the text in view" by way of observation (17). With this skill, he desires to "recogniz[e] and not[e] details in the wording of the text and their significance for its meaning" through the means of structural diagramming via inductive Bible study (43). The second skill is "seeing what is there [through] recognizing and noting details in the wording of the text and their significance in the meaning (42).

The next skill is in "asking the right questions ... for the best research to interpret the writer's meaning" -- also known as hermeneutics (59, 61). The challenge here lies in trying to know what someone's intentions are when they are so far removed by historical, literary, and theological distance (63-64). One these questions are answered, the preacher moves to the next step which is "naming the textual idea" (80). Here, the preacher discovers "the writer's idea in the text and designat[es] it with precise terminology" (83). Once accomplished, the next step is to touch human needs by "tracing from theological concepts in the text to corresponding needs in contemporary hearers" (102).

After this step is executed in the interpretation stages, the time comes to bridge from text to sermon (121) followed by the writing of the sermon divisions which "clearly state the teachings of the text on its subject" (139). Next is the step of planning the sermon design which determines "the arrangement of sermon materials for the most effective communication" (159) followed by the development of sermon ideas which will aid in the "understanding, acceptance, and response of the hearer" (182). The next step in this area of understanding and acceptance is in "exploring natural analogies ... for illustrating sermon ideas" for, as McDill notes, "a concept does not impact our thinking unless we can see it" (203). Along this line of thinking, the next skill deals with "drawing pictures, telling stories" in an imaginative and creative way to bring biblical and contemporary stories to life in the mind of the listener (223).

Finally, the culminates all the steps thus far into this final step which aims to "[conform] every aspect of sermon design to the aim of a faith response in the hearer" (244) for it is the "only appropriate response to God and His Word" (258).

Critical Evaluation

As stated earlier, McDill's purpose in writing this book consists of "identify[ing] and strengthen[ing] the specific skills needed for more effective sermon preparation" (ix). By focusing on the content of the sermon, he succeeds for the most part in making a user-friendly volume that deserves a place on every pastor's bookshelf.

What immediately strikes the reader's cursory glance of this work is the layout. McDill deserves praise for achieving his goal of presenting a "self-improvement format [and] a do-it-yourself approach" (7). Each chapter contains a sentence that clearly and succinctly tells the "skill [McDill hopes] to develop with this exercise" (83). Each chapter also contains easily identifiable headings and subheadings, a box or boxes containing key definitions, guidelines for each exercise, a chapter summary, study questions, and examples of how to implement each exercise. He helps the preacher in his studies who is pressed for time. McDill's layout allows the preacher a quick reference guide as needed.

Another appealing aspect of this work is its practical nature. This is not a theoretical book on homiletical philosophy but a basic `how-to' manual for preachers to work their own pace (11). He notes that "just because you think you understand something doesn't mean you can do it. Practice is the only way to master a skill, even in sermon preparation" (4). McDill takes the preacher step-by-step through each of the skills he presents. As mentioned just previously, each chapter contains a segment guiding the reader through an exercise for each skill (32, 52, 73, 90, 114, 131, 146, 171, 193, 215, 235, 257). In these segments, the author certainly practices what he preaches in that not only does he tell the reader what each skill entails, he also helps the reader apply it step-by-step from the ground up . This portion is so helpful for the young preacher finding himself overwhelmed with the thought of sermon preparation. McDill figuratively takes the young preacher by the hand and guides him carefully through each process.

A highly commended chapter ib this work is Chapter Ten, "Exploring Natural Analogies" (201). A `natural analogy' takes a "relationship, circumstance, event, or other factor" in the natural realm and parallels it with a theological concept (207). McDill notes that an "incarnational (in human form) principle must guide us today as se seek, through preaching, to be channels of God's ongoing revelation" (203-204). He rightly notes that we must "look for analogies that will help your hearer understand the idea" (211) and are grounded in our respective "arenas of life" (216). This skill is vital in connecting with our contemporary audiences and is the same style of preaching that Jesus often used with the common people with His use of parables, which took a common situation, event, or person's position and used it to instill a heavenly truth.

Two weaknesses are found in this work. The most noticeable is the title. This reviewer finds the title a bit presumptuous, as if acquiring and applying these twelve skills will automatically make one's preaching `great.' For McDill, great content equals great preaching and clearly his focus is on fleshing out the content of the Scriptures in "the skills necessary to sermon preparation" (10). The title implies this would be a more comprehensive approach to sermon preparation and delivery in the whole realm of preaching. Instead, he minimizes the effect of delivery in favor of content alone.

The delivery style is not the critical factor in what we recognize as great preaching. Great delivery without effective content is often only "sound and fury, signifying nothing." On the other hand, striking content is of real interest to the hearer, even if the delivery is weak. (10).

Yet again, the title of the book implies preaching and delivery is part of the preaching process. Plus, the Scriptural accounts of the preachers and prophets indicate that the content and the way they communicated that content was part of the message. The Apostle Paul notes that:

My speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God (1 Corinthians 2:4-5, ESV).

The point here that Paul makes is that content alone does not a message make, but it is how the message crafts the speaker's heart and thus persuades passionately through the Spirit. McDill seems to miss this point completely. A better title would be "The 12 Essential Skills for Great Sermon Preparation."

Conclusion

After reading this work in its entirety, I would highly recommend this work to someone looking for a manual on sermon preparation. Even though the title is misleading, once the preacher enters into the contents of the book and sees the helpful way McDill fleshes out these various skills, he will be thankful for having such a wonderful volume in his hands.

I would recommend using this volume as a tune-up to specific areas of your preaching preparation that need work rather than trying to work from the beginning to the end of this book, for that would take a large amount of time. Absorbing this book little-by-little, however, will certainly transform your sermon preparation and your congregation will thank you all the more for this transformation.

I must admit as a recent Bible college graduate I was intimidated by the task of expository preaching. However, as I finished each chapter I thought to myself, "I can do that." Soon I was through the entire book confident I could preach an effective expository sermon on any passage of Scripture.
McDill takes you through from text to sermon and everything in between showing exactly how to do everything. I readily admit that my preaching has changed since reading this book. It has added depth and meaning and my sermons are not just an exegetical speech but messages that connects with the hearts and spirits of the congregation.
This book is a must-read for the expository preacher!

McDill has captured the essence of expository Preaching. No other preaching method I have studied is as God honoring and powerful. It teaches you how to preach God's Word and not your own or anyone elses. At the same time it helps you to use your own life experiences to illustrate the points you pull directly out of God's Word. It takes the best of Inductive study methods and couples them with the art of expository preaching.

"Jung in a nutshell" does not do justice to this topic. It is a bowl of nuts.

But my very rudimentary understanding (to put forth one nut of many) is that consciousness, or the differentiation of self is a progression, which arises from a world of the unconscious. Anybody might say such a thing and get lucky, without having read Aion at all. But to read Aion and then say it is putting your money where your mouth is.

The template of self begins at the Anthropos (relying on the second-to-last chapter on the quaternario schema), and crystalizes in the lapis, where consciousness becomes fully realized.

Jung was not prosyletizing Christianity, but used Christ as an allegory of development of self. This is why he resorts to alchemy and Gnosticism, more than patristic forms of Christianity. He saw the philosophical underpinnings of Christianity as a workable model to explain how the higher human, who operates on his environment as well as on his own thinking, rises above his primal, animalist soma.

We began as a perfect template in the realm of the unconscious, we descended into the world of formation (borrowing from the Sephir Yetzirah here), or "Physis," as Jung called it, only to rise again through the quaternario ladder to become Anthropos once again.

By the way, the reader might note that in later chapters Jung seems to drop any mention about "Aion", a term better explained in the middle parts of the book (Ch. 5-11). I think Jung wanted us to apply his quaternario model on a meta-scale, not just as an explanation of the perfection of self and the emergence of consciousness.

As we know, we are nearing the end of the present Piscean Aion (the Jesus era), which was preceded by the war-like Arien Aion (the Greco/Roman conquest era), but which is to be followed by a more intellectual Aquarian Aion (whatever that will be).

The progression of the Aions, I think Jung hoped we would discern, correspond directly to his quaternario schema, and that human consciousness is tied to the meta-physical laws of the universe (in this case, astronomy) just like the ocean's tides correspond to the lunar phases.

I found a lot of this book formidably dense. Recently I read an introductory book on Jung by psychoanalyst Anthony Storr that sheds some light, even though Storr never specifically mentions AION. Storr observes a tendency in Jung's thinking to describe the psyche as a self-regulating mechanism, like the human endocrine system. For example, extraverted activity in the unconscious compensates for introverted activity in the conscious (or vice versa). Also, a neurosis may be the unconscious's way of compensating for overly one-sided thinking in the conscious. Similarly, a schizophrenic delusion may be the psyche's (unsuccessful) attempt to restore a lost mental balance.

Examples of this balance/compensation principle in AION:
(1) The Christ symbol. It's a symbol of the Self (like most of the symbols and archetypes discussed in the book), but it lacks a Shadow or inferior component; consequently, the early Christians were compelled to generate the Anti-Christ symbol. However, since the Christ and Anti-Christ are separate entities in traditional Christian thinking, the Western worldview has become highly dualistic and Manichaean, good vs. evil.
(2) The God archetype. As Western thinking has become increasingly secular over the centuries, the God-image has become repressed into the unconscious, where it emerges in savage political forms such as fascism, a worship of the State. (Jung wrote this a few years after World War II.)
(3) Leviathan and Behemoth. "God's monstrous antagonist produces a double because the God-image is incomplete..." (pg. 120).
(4) Sons of God in Catharist legend: Satanael the elder son, Christ the younger son. Similar to the Christ/Anti-Christ dichotomy.
(5) The "higher" and "lower" Adam figures in some Gnostic legends. The higher Adam represents higher states of consciousness; the lower Adam, the unconscious.
(6) The two thieves crucified with Christ. One is destined for heaven (higher consciousness), the other for a warmer climate (unconscious).

Of course, there's more to the book than this equilibrium-of-the-Self aspect. But that aspect ties in with the main theme, the process of individuation (or ascending to a higher state of consciousness) in the Western mind.

Jung really assaults the reader here with his encyclopedic knowledge of religion and alchemy. A lot of his later work deals with esoteric subjects (alchemy, gnosticism, hermeticism, kabbalah). I found a few of the religious subjects, like the medieval "Holy Ghost" movement, to be pretty interesting in themselves, but unfortunately Jung discusses only those elements that relate to his psychological theories.

As usual, this is another discerning, but difficult to read Jung book. It focuses on Christian imagery as related to Jung's model of consciousness. This model includes 3 layers vs. Freud's 2-layered approach--by adding a meta-layer which Jung termed the Collective Unconscious. Part 1 of volume 9 of the collected works addressed this layer & its denizens, the archetypes. It is very useful to read that volume prior to this one. This one provides additional information on good vs. evil. The socialization process of each civilization or nation attempts to reify acceptable behavior into children. The down side of this is that parts of the child's psyche is split off--or repressed. The conglomeration of these split off parts form the individual's shadow complex. The initial step in individuation is to reclaim & integrate these parts back into consciousness. Such repressed parts, if not brought back to consciousness, slowly gain energy & can affect people negatively--"not being myself" or Freudian slips. Jung found that alchemy depicted much of his psychological discoveries--giving him a relieving confirmation of his views. In another work, he also mentions that the great Hasidic leader, the Great Maggid of Mezerich, described the bulk of Jungian psychology centuries before. Jung looks for image parallels throughout history & all over the planet (similar to Joseph Campbell's quest). The 2nd phase of individuation is recalling anima or animus projections from other people--a topic far too complex for this review--see Schwartz-Salant & Stein's "Gender & Soul in Psychotherapy."

However, Jung had issues with his Christian upbringing (see his autobiography "Memories, Dreams, Reflections), but he finds extensive parallels within Christianity, especially Catholicism herein. His analysis will probably have an upside & a downside for both Christians & non-Christians alike--though perhaps differently. One can find similar parallels in other religions as well. For a good overall exposition of Jungian principles by a Christian theologian, see Hans Schaer's "Religion & the Cure of Souls in Jung's Psychology" & read CW11, Jung's "Psychology of Religion..." I liked these better than "Aion" (& I'm more interested in Buddhism). Jung's split with long-time friend Father Victor White was over Jung's view of evil as an entity vs. White's Catholic view of the "privatio boni"--evil as the absence of good (per Jung's "Letters"). I suggest reading M. Scott Peck's "People of the Lie" for more on this issue.

As in all but one of his books (i.e. "Answer to Job"), Jung takes a Thinking, scientific stance, saying (~Vajrayana Buddhism), "Emotion incidentally is not an activity of the individual, but something that happens to him." This is not my favorite Jung book, but it's worth reading.

_Aion_ is part 2 of volume nine of Jung's collected works. Although _Aion_ is unquestionably a stand-alone work, ideally it should be read after part 1, which is _Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious_.

That said, _Aion_ is one of Jung's greatest works and is one of the first three that anyone who is new to Jung should start with. The first part deals with Christianity, and the significance of the death of Christ. This is treated as a legitimate, factual historical event, yet it is also explained as a collective pschic phenomenon in the general sense. The middle part of the book deals with ancient alchemy, and the symbolic parallels between alchemy and modern conceptions of psychology. This might sound dull, but trust me - you will be surprised to see the uncanny symbolic parallels between ancient magical practices and the most modern, up to date theories of the psyche. This is discussed at length in the section on the "Two Fishes", which is one of Jung's greatest essays (although quite difficult). The final section deals with quaternity symbolism, and features a wide array of strange diagrams. About 200 pages in, these diagrams will become more frequent, and the reader might get frustrated trying to see the significance of these rudimentary drawings. Personally, my advice is to stop reading after 200 pages. All of the useful essays are contained within these first 200 pages, while the final 50 or so pages contains esoteric essays which can be considered, at best, curiosity pieces for the insatiable, die-hard Jungian. The editiors wisely confined this esoterica to final few pages of the book. This is not to take anything away from the book as a whole. Overall, _Aion_ is extremely profound and insightful, and is a must read for Jungians and non-Jungians alike.

This is a must own book for any student of Carl Jung. It covers the basic concepts of his psychological topology in his own words in a brief space and goes into a much deeper dive on the Self. This exploration of Self goes deeply into Christian symbolism and the structure and dynamics of the Self.

Like much of Carl Jung's writing, some of this is very tough going for people new to Jung. It is not a bedside book and the average reader will need to look a lot of things up. However, it is indispensable in terms of the concepts.

There are many good books that can provide commentary on this book and you can find them easily. I would highly recommend that you pick up one of these books about Aion in addition to the text itself. This is a book that has many layers and one which you must be patient with.

If you are merely looking for an introduction to Jung, then I would go with Jung's Map of the Soul by Murray Stein. This is the BEST introduction I know of and quotes Aion a lot. Aspects of the Faminine is also very good for those who want to know more about the anima/animus and a more readable version of Jung's thoughts on marriage, the feminine, etc.

The Viking Portable Jung is also good to get a cross section of Jung's most important thought. However, you will eventually want to read Aion for its depth and extensive elaboration on the nature of the Self.

There are also audio files, and lots of extra pictures not included in the book at their website, where you can also buy the book.

You can get more information at http://www.apollostory.com/

Reading another review, In which the reviewer states that he has to hide his copy from himself, I had to chuckle. This is the first book I can ever remember finishing, and then immediately flipping back to page one and starting all over again. Not only is the story an absolute stunner, in which some of the brightest and most engaged minds of a generation are swept into a whirlwind of impossible problems, which all have to be solved yesterday, but it is also made even more amazing by the fact that it is true. As if it weren't enough to start with such great material, the authors weave a terrific web in which all parts of the story are brought together, and the people involved are shown to be real people.

After reading this book, I would highly recommend watching "Apollo 13, to the Edge and Beyond", to see the faces and hear the voices of some of the extraordinary people whose stories appear in this truly excellent book.

Perhaps saying this is the best book I've ever read is too much (although, honestly, it just might be the best), but I will say it is my favorite, including fiction works. I've read it six times, after which I had to hide it from myself. If I walk by my copy and just happen to pick it up to thumb through I'll read it again.
Many non-fiction books tend to become tangential, or will leave the reader wondering if anyone involved with the project ever heard of an editor. Not this book. There is scarcely a wasted word or waver in direction, to the point that even the footnotes are worthy.
The authors' pacing of the story and placement of the material and concepts are unsurpassed in my experience. They create a genuine excitement in the reader.
It's a mystery why the book has never been reissued, which has driven up the price of existing copies and so reduced access to such an enticing and, in my opinion, needed history. I would very much like to see the BBC or Tom Hanks latch on to this story -- it's worth a twelve-part series.
Update, 9-19-04 - I have learned from the most reliable source this book has been reissued. Go to www.apollostory.com for details.

I've read most of the other "space" books and this one is the best by far. Most of these books are written from the astronaut's point of view, and while this is an exciting and interesting view point, it's pretty clear that there are thousands of people working behind the scenes for each astronaut out doing his job (his - this is Apollo - all of them were men).

After reading "Apollo" I have a new understanding for the amount of effort and love that went into the creation of the Apollo program. The men and women who helped put a man on the moon are every bit the heroes as the 12 who stood on the surface (as well as the seven, the nine, etc.).

If you really want to understand how America put a man on the moon, this is the book to read. After you finish, go back and watch Tom Hanks' "From the Earth to the Moon."

This book is the true "diamond-in-the-rough". With so many re-issues of material from the manned space program and specifically Apollo, it's hard to imagine that this book isn't re-issued again and again! This book (along with Andrew Chaiken's Man on the Moon and Jim Lovell's Lost Moon) is by far the definitive account of the Apollo program. Not just a re-gurgitation of the Apollo history, this story is told from a Flight Controller/Engineering perspective and gives a truer picture of what the early and subsequent days of the program were like. Here, Apollo Program Manager Joe Shea comes alive and is portrayed as an heroic/brilliant manager, not the villian of the Apollo 1 fire as in other accounts. You're down in the "trench" in Mission Control for not only the Apollo 11 Moon landing, but also for the lesser known Apollo 6, the ill-fated second un-manned launch of the Saturn V. It may be hard to find this book, but the effort is well worth it...one of the top 5 books that I've ever read.

Jung was meticulously looking for psychological patterns of thinking. These patterns he called archetypes. Like the instincts have influence on the physical body, the archetypes should have their influence on the thinking mind. They have their origin in what Jung called the collective unconscious.

While the personal unconscious is made up of contents which have at some time been conscious but which have disappeared from consciousness through having been forgotten or repressed, the contents of the collective unconscious have a collective, universal and impersonal nature which cannot be reduced to experiences in the individual's past.

All original mythological revelations have their source in the collective unconscious. Metaphorical mythology is needed in expression of the complex archetypal contents. Even though the cultural surroundings have their influence on various myths, too, it seems like the collective unconscious was identical in all individuals.

Although Jung was a real pioneer in his field, I find his (translated) style of writing slightly 'dry'. Especially the last chapters on mandala symbolism were boring. -I suggest you highlight the most interesting contents, so you'll find them easily later again.

Jung's books are not easy reads, but they are almost invariably eye-openers. I recommend first reading his student's works (von Franz, Barbara Hanna, Joland Jacobi), his "Man and His Symbols," & (especially with respect to this book) Joseph Campbell & Jean Shinoda Bolen. It helps a lot to understand mythology when exploring the collective unconscious. Jung goes to great lengths to show how the denizens of the collective unconscious (archetypes--universal images~Plato's view) map onto very different cultures throughout time & space--appearing in art, dreams, visions, etc. Bolen uses Greek goddesses & gods to depict these. Jung disliked neologisms (creating new words) instead he transplanted them from other disciplines to map into his psychological theories & constructs--thus, "archetypes" & "complexes"--paralleling General Systems Theory (cf. biologist von Bertalanfy's works). "Complex" comes from mathematics' complex numbers. Jung knew & conversed with physicist Pauli, Kabbalah professor Scholem, & many other famous, high-caliber scholars. It is important to realize, when reading this book, the important differences between archetypes of the collective unconscious & complexes of the personal unconscious--though they have the same names! Thus, the mother archetype is the pure image of motherhood--with both positive & negative aspects. But, each person has an actual, individual mother (or lack thereof--absent mother). The interaction or combination of these two forms one's mother complex. As in math, it has a rational part (actual mother) & an imaginary part (archetype). In math, the imaginary part is multiplied by i, the square root of minus 1--which cannot exist, yet mathematicians use it creatively! So does Jung. Even modern works by "post-Jungians" often confuse or confound these two. The Anima/animus is particularly prone to this confusion. Unfortunately, Jung added to this confusion IMHO by calling the anima soul & the animus spirit. The anima/animus use gender & projection to enable people attune to the Self, the overarching archetype (others are essentially subsets). It is the image of wholeness &, thus, the object of psychological individuation--not integration. Jung says one cannot integrate the entire unconscious--that is beyond human capability. This is more subtle than it seems--esp. regarding western mystics' unio mystica (union with God) & eastern enlightenment. Jung attempts to assist people evolve, ~the U.S. Army: "be all you can be," rather than a thin veneer of civilization--p. 269 "Outwardly people are more or less civilized, but inwardly they are still primitives." Further, p. 322 "The view that we can simply turn our back on evil & in this way eschew it belongs to the long list of antiquated naiveté's. This is sheer ostrich policy & does not affect the reality of evil in the slightest." Therefore, Jung includes the negative aspects of both archetypes & complexes. Finally, as scientific psychologist, Jung notes that p. 269 "We should never forget that in any psychological discussion we are not saying anything about the psyche, but that the psyche is always speaking about itself."

This intriguing study of the archetypes of our collective human unconscious is FASCINATING. Here we confront the fountainheads of the hypostasis of dreams and the active genesis of fecund mythology. The collective unconscious differs from the personal in that it is not constituted of repressed or forgotten complexes but of inherited archetypes that were never a part of your conscious life. Anyone who plans to study mythology should be required to read this book... ignorance of it would prevent your comprehension of the primitive man and tribes' living mythology and religion. (Also would be an essential tool in exploring dreamwork or human nature) The archetypes are felt in our most personal life and encountered in dreams. Unconsciously, unprojected, it turns out that our own minds have a "sea of possibilities", and that they assume definite forms only in projection. The archetypes are vessels that we can never empty or fill, having only potential existence, taking shape they become no longer what they were. They need be interpreted anew throughout the ages. They are the imperishable elements of the unconscious, but they change their shape continually, being the "treasure in the realm of the shadowy thoughts" which Kant spoke of, and among the highest values of the human pysche. They are the simple solution of how archaic myths, far from being merely historical remnants or allegories of physical processes, still grasp us with profound effect in all levels of society and eras. Awareness is needed of these jewels to understand the unconscious' interconnectedness with our conscious life and the fact that the human pysche is not born tabula rasa. This is a classic work, that some may not adhere to, but far from being a philosophy, and me far from being a pyschologist, I would not take the bold step here to criticize Jung's work. Jungian or not, I give it my stamp and seal of approval guaranteeing your utmost interest.

This work, along with _Modern Man in Search of a Soul_, is one of the best places to start if you are new to reading Jung. It is also the companion piece and predecessor to _Aion_, which is another spectacular and groundbreaking work. If you want to read _Aion_, it would make sense for you to read this one first, since it is part 1 of volume nine, while _Aion_ is part two. Overall, I would say that both parts 1 and 2 of volume nine are absolutely essential reading for any Jungian, and if you're going to buy one, go ahead and buy both.

As for the actual content of _The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious_, I would describe it as an overview and recapitulation of many of Jung's key concepts. As the title implies, the main concepts are archetypal images (as revealed in to people in dreams) and the collective unconscious. These are trademark Jungian concepts, and Jung devoted a large portion of his writings to explaining what he meant by Archetypes and the collective unconscious. If I could explain it to you right here I would, but Jung spends a the first two hundred pages of this book simply explaining and defining "archetype" and "collective unconscious". These are key concepts in understanding the human mind, and may help unlock the mysteries of conscious existence; it is by no means superfluous to devote such rigorous study to these ideas. _The Archetypes and the Collcetive Unconscious_ is NOT a narrowly focused, specialized, or jargonistic work. It deals with ideas that are central to understanding the human psyche or soul, and applies universally to all of mankind.

There is also a pictorial section of the book in which Jung actually shows examples, in the form of paintings, of archetypal images that were seen by his patients in their dreams and subsequently drawn by the patients themselves. Some of these paintings are very artistic, and there are uncanny similarities among many of them. This pictorial section occurs about 200 pages in. After the pictures, Jung goes into a detailed explanation of each one, which I found to be somewhat tiresome, especially considering many of the paintings were extremely similar. Overall, the final, brief, section of the book in which the paintings are described is quite boring, and I would recommend that the reader simply look at the paintings and forego the final explanations, which are extremely redundant. In other words, read the first two hundred pages, look at the pictures, stop, and then move on to _Aion_. The weakness of this final section is not enough to justify removing a star from my ratings, however, simply because of the utter profundity and potency of the first 200 pages, which represents the majority of the book anyway. Keep in mind that the vast majority of Jung's writings consist of essays not more that 100 pages long each. You will find that most of his complete works contain numerous profound and insightful essays, occasionally laced with the odd, specialized, highly esoteric essays. When you come across one of these rare but unreadable essays the best idea is to just skip it rather than get bogged down. This is not to take anything away from Jung and his great, prophetic works; I am just trying to give you the heads up on how to avoid some of the rough patches.

It's a book of essays on a theme, like most of his other books. Here's an attempt to describe the whole theory in a few paragraphs. Jung suggests the existence of a 3-layered psyche consisting of (1) the conscious (active part of the mind), (2) the personal unconscious (thinking over which we have little or no control), and (3) the collective unconscious (unevolved, animal-instinctive mental activity). The collective unconscious is "collective" in the sense that humans resemble each other the most at the lowest, biological levels. "The body's carbon is simply carbon" (pg. 173). We inherit the collective unconscious from the common pool of human characteristics, like morphological aspects of the body such as arms, legs, etc.

The "archetypes" originate in the collective unconscious and are the psychological equivalents of Platonic Forms. (I realized about halfway through the book that archetype-figures also appear in the personal unconscious, where they're called "complexes"). The most important archetypes appear to be the Shadow (the inferior aspects of the self which we hide from others), the Anima/Animus (our object(s) of desire), and the Wise Old Man (e.g., teacher, medicine man). He also discusses a Mother archetype and a Child archetype and indicates the existence of numerous others. Identifying strongly with an archetype leads to psychosis.

The heart of the book is in the first essay, but the rest is useful in fleshing out descriptions and giving examples. The collective Anima archetype, for instance, can be found among movie stars and in the general pop culture. Devils and tricksters often represent the Shadow archetype. Tolkien's Gandalf is a good instance of the Wise Old Man. It's not so easy to identify a particular individual's Anima complex or Shadow complex.

A few things bothered me about the book. For one, Jung indicates that the "Primitive mentality differs from the civilized chiefly in that the conscious mind is far less developed in scope ... The Primitive cannot assert that he thinks; it is rather that something thinks in him" (pg. 153). This is a dubious kind of distinction between civilized and uncivilized states of mind that seems to have gone out of fashion over the decades. Also, I couldn't tell from this book what methodology Jung used to determine the significance of dream symbols. Does every dream about climbing a tree represent the psyche climbing the "World Tree" toward higher states of consciousness? Do snakes always represent the unconscious? Is every old woman in a dream an example of the Mother archetype? Etc.

One of the more interesting and also frustrating essays describes a case study of a woman who paints mandalas over a period of 16-plus years. Why mandalas? Jung says the mandala represents the Self, and painting them is useful for determining the contents of the psyche. He discusses the first dozen or so in detail (reprinted in color), but then glosses over the rest, which came into his hands after the patient had died from cancer!

Fascinating book, very worthwhile. Tons of well organized and documented information. Wonderful and thorough reference.

I've made armor using the diagrams of existing armor types from this book. I didn't much care for some of the strapping arrangements described, so I designed my own. (Hey, this is the armor the regular fighters left behind - Wisby was defended by the teens and the oldsters to judge from the age of the bodies. This suggests the men of prime fighting-age were elsewhere, with their primary armor.) It worked, well, and protected me in combat. And the illustrations and text were clear, clear, clear.

This book has a very special meaning to me since I'm from the town of Wisby(nowdays spelled Visby). Born and raised on the island Gotland and lived most of my life thete. I'v built several of these coats of armour and so far everyone I've tried on have been of satisfatcion. The book is so far the best resource book I've ever found. I have for a long time tried to find the first edition, but IF you can find it somewhere it's incredibly expensive. So jus imagine my joy when I saw there was a reissue! And very soon I'm going to be proud owner of this masterpiece...
The book is really easy to use and have exceptional drawings and scetches. Transforming the scale of the objects in the book to original size is really easy and there's a lot of information i general. At last a recommendation for all you SCA-fighters out there. Try out armour no.6 and no.9 because they give very good protection and are comfortable to wear.

This book has a very special meaning to me since I'm from the town of Wisby(nowdays spelled Visby). Born and raised on the island Gotland and lived most of my life thete. I'v built several of these coats of armour and so far everyone I've tried on have been of satisfatcion. The book is so far the best resource book I've ever found. I have for a long time tried to find the first edition, but IF you can find it somewhere it's incredibly expensive. So jus imagine my joy when I saw there was a reissue! And very soon I'm going to be proud owner of this masterpiece...
The book is really easy to use and have exceptional drawings and scetches. Transforming the scale of the objects in the book to original size is really easy and there's a lot of information i general. At last a recommendation for all you SCA-fighters out there. Try out armour no.6 and no.9 because they give very good protection and are comfortable to wear.

This book contains a wealth of knowledge about medieval armour and the effects of weapons. The pictures are fantastic, skeletons buried in their armour, rarely does one get to see how armour was actually worn. The breakdowns and detail of actual armour construction is immaculate and enables any competant armourer to reproduce the examples shown. The detail from an archeologist's point of view was a little too in depth for my interest but if you are that way inclined then great. Only issue I have is the "analysis" of some of the wounds seen, Mr. Thordeman seems to imply that this battle was unusual in some way, that the combatants fought with unusual fury. He sites one incident of one combatant having both legs severed by a single blow as an indication of some great fury and intensity. I only disagree as there are very few examples of medieval battle wound pathology to compare the Wisby corpses. It seems that the author is looking at the battle from too detached a viewpoint, forgetting that killing was the purpose of the people who showed up to battle that day. This is a small detail but supposition as to the mental states of combatants, by someone who has no first hand experience of battle is unproductive. Otherwise a great book.

This is an excellent book, well written, clear and concise. It focuses on the Year of the Terror during the French Revolution.

There are several strengths to this book.

First, Palmer does an excellent job of giving short biographies of the major characters that ruled France as a committee during this period. They include Carnot,the military officer who maintained the war office during the terror,including defending the northern border of France. Collot D'Herbois, the ex-actor and fanatic had a very different temprement from the monk-like Robespierre. Saint-Just's attacks against the Dantonists was fascinating. The fall of Herault de Sechelles, the philosopher former aristocrat is very interesting.

Second, the chapters are very well organized. They are aranged around topics, including a hyistory of how the Comitteee for Public Safety evolved in the fifth year of the revolution; three chapters on maintaining control of the other regions of France during the revolution; chapters on foreign conflicts; a chapter on wage and price control and maintaining a central economy, are all well written and interesting.

I read the book after reading Hilary Mantel's novel "A Place of Greater Safety" regarding the relationship and competition between Robespierre and Danton. The two books perfectly compliment each other.


This is a very accessible history of this portion of the revolution and is extremely informative. It was written in 1941 but is fresh, current, and alive with detail.

I decided to read R.R. Palmer's The Twelve Who Ruled after having it recommended to me in class. The Year of the Terror and the Committee of Public Safety are often overlooked or not given enough description in history classes and it wasn't until my senior year in college that I had even heard of the Year of the Terror. Palmer's book is great for the student because he includes enough background information so that one can understand the information without feeling overwhelmed. The text deals almost exclusively the events from the summer of 1793 through the summer of 1794. Because so much happened in this one year period, Palmer presents it on an almost day-to-day status.

Originally written in 1939 and 1940, Palmer mentions in the Bibliographical Essay how difficult it was to gather information from the French archives, but upon reading this book and having some basic knowledge of the events of the period, one finds it difficult to find any deficiency in Palmer's work. The 2005 edition of The Twelve Who Ruled opens with a new foreword by Isser Woloch, Moore Collegiate Professor of History at Columbia University. In this foreword, Woloch gives the reader a little history of Palmer's book, as well as a brief overview of the events detailed in the book.

Palmer begins his book with a one page list, titled "The Twelve", of the members of the CPS and gives a brief one-line description of each. On the next page is a sketched map with the locations and provinces mentioned in his book, as well as a translation of the Republican Calendar. I don't want to go into detail about all of Palmer's 15 chapters, but some need mentioning. The first chapter, "Twelve Terrorists to Be", gives a detailed description about the history of each member of the Committee of Public Safety leading up to the Revolution. The subsequent chapters describe the different political groups of the Revolution and how the CPS came to be as powerful as it did.

Chapters 6-9 deal with the individual missions of the CPS members to different parts of France. Chapter 6, "Republic in Miniature", describes Georges Couthon's mission to his native region of Clermont-Ferrand and his attempt to turn Puy-de-Dôme into a model for the Republic. Chapter 7, "Doom at Lyons", is self-explanatory and deals with Collot d'Herbois and the Committee's shocking actions in Lyons. Chapters 8 and 9 deal with the missions of Committee members to Alsace and Brittany to deal with the army and naval affairs in those regions, respectively.

The beginning of the end becomes apparent in chapter 11, "Finding the Narrow Way". In this chapter Danton makes his return to Paris and Robespierre and other members of the Committee are becoming more and more adamant in their positions. The remaining chapters detail the downfall of the Committee of Public Safety and the numerous executions that take place. The exception to this is chapter 14, "The Rush upon Europe", which describes the military events during the spring and early summer of 1794.

During the epilogue, Palmer sums up the lives of the eight of the original twelve that were remaining after 10 Thermidor and the different ways each one went. It is interesting to see how some of the members played a part during Napoleon's reign. Palmer end's the book with discussing Barère, him being the last surviving member of the Committee (passed away in 1841), and his last days.

Readability was something that I was looking for when I was choosing a book for this assignment. I didn't want a book that would be so in depth that it would be a chore to read, yet I didn't want a book that would have less information than my textbook. The Twelve Who Ruled was perfect in that sense and Palmer kept it interesting by including many quotations from meetings and correspondence of the period in his book. I haven't read any other books on the Year of the Terror, but I would have to recommend this book to anyone interested in the French Revolution, or even political science.

I agree with all of the amazon reviews as to this being a compelling narrative. Most interesting was Palmer's argument that the CPS wasn't merely Robespierre's beard. Palmer is mostly persuasive in his suggestion that power was more or less equitably diffused throughout the committee and that facesaving hindsight by CPS members is the reason why history has affixed sole blame for the terror on Robespierre's shoulders. Less convincing is Palmer's portait of Jacobin ideological purity. Robespierre and St.Just are presented as Spartan warriors with spotless souls even as he details their forgeries and chicanery in railroading their political rivals. Palmer often protests too much, bemoaning the miniscule percentage of victims of the terror and blaming CGS members, representatives on mission, anyone really but Robespierre. One can never escape bias in French revolution histories-so this criticism should certainly be taken with a grain of salt. Palmer's book is unique and refreshing however, meticulously and cogently argued.

In print since 1941, this fine book is a group portrait and analysis of the Committee of Public Safety, the most important organ of government in France from the fall of 1793 to the summer of 1794. Writing at the end of the 1930s, Palmer was particularly interested in the psychology of dictatorship and how much governments emerge.

When the members of the Committee took their seats, France and the French Revolution appeared headed for disaster. There was widespread dissent in the provinces, and in some, outright revolt. The chaotic politics in Paris made government from the center difficult and the armies of almost every other major European state seemed poised to dismember France. The members of the committee were on the face of it, an undistinguished lot of modest prior accomplishments. Almost exclusively middle class, none of them would have been able to rise high under the Ancien Regime. Most were lawyers or had legal training. Several were simultaneously minor provincial intellectuals. Two were army officers whose plebian origins would have prevented them from attaining significant rank in the Royal Army. As a group, and despite significant internal political strains, they proved to be an energetic and capable group of administrators and politicians. Palmer does very well in describing the considerable obstacles to success, the enormous efforts made by most of the Committee, and their considerable success as administrators.

Over the course of a year, the committee met the great challenges in front of them more or less successfully. Revolts in the provinces were crushed, often with great brutality. Though the Parisian political scene remained volatile, it did stabilize and the Committee was able to construct a reasonably effective central government. Assisted by dissent and incompetence among the monarchial opponents of France, the Committee found the resources and military leadership needed to prosecute the war successfully. The Committee arguably saved the Revolution and went a long way towards the construction of a powerful, centralized French state.

But what kind of Revolution did they save? Palmer shows very well that the Committee were not merely reacting to the pressure of events but were all committed Republicans of varying degrees of radicalism. It is impossible to understand their actions without recognizing their ideological commitment to a new kind of Republican society informed strongly by Rousseauist ideals. Detestation of inherited privilege, anti-clericalism (though not atheism), worship of the idea of virtue, a commitment to some form of popular sovereignty, and the pursuit of a strong state were common ideals of the Committee. As is often the case, war produced radicalization and these ideals would also justify the Terror and the ruthless suppression of provincial revolts, and encourage French armies in practices that anticipate the brutal behavior of Napoleon's armies in occupied Europe. In a few cases, the Committee made pragmatic choices that contradicted some of their earlier convictions. Most of the committee disliked the violent de-Christianization carried out by some radicals but did not interfere in some cases to maintain their political support in Paris. All the Committee members would have prefered an economic system based on free trade but the exigencies of war resulted in the first systematic and partially successful effort at a planned economy.

Palmer both describes the actions of the committee well and writes well about the individual members. His objective treatment of Robespierre is particularly good. This book is a model in terms of melding biographical information with the broader context of historical events. As a study of revolutionary psychology and a case example of how dictatorships form, this book is excellent.

This may have been the best book that I have ever read. Palmer does a great job of portraying the characters, the times, and the decisions they made. The last chapter is absolutely riveting. One of if not the best book I've ever read!

In 1979 Alexandr Romanovich Luria's autobiography "The Making of Mind" was published. Luria, no question about it, represented during the XX century one of the most influential researchers in social, behavioral, and neurological areas. His theoretical approaches and clinical interpretations, as stated in this book, continue being contemporary ideas.

Luria lived one of the most exciting historical moments that any person can live, not only from the scientific, but also from the social point of view. It was a time of rapid scientific development and profound social changes. He developed different research programs and worked in different environments. But throughout his life, his contagious enthusiasm in understanding human cognition was his life passion; this passion was the guiding thread in all the different research programs that he developed across his life: measuring emotions, comparing identical twins, studying conceptual abilities in illiterate people, testing patients with brain pathology, analyzing mental retardation, approaching the role of frontal lobes in behavior, and others.

Now, his 1979 autobiography becomes alive, visual, and real, with the DVD that is included in this book. Michael Cole -very likely the person who best knows about Luria's life and work- initially makes an extraordinary presentation of Luria's life and research. It becomes easy to understand Luria's scientific career and social context since his beginning in Kazan until his death in Moscow. Further, a series of interviews with people who worked with Luria or had some significant professional relationship with Luria are included. Luria's life appears as something direct, and specially, very real. His enthusiasm, generosity, and profound understanding of human's nature, are repeated over and over by all the people who had the opportunity to meet Luria, or had any type of relationship with him.

It is true -as Luria frequently stated- that people come and go and only the solid work remains. But in human history some times a unique combination of scientific understanding, intelligence, and personality characteristics is found. Those people do not simply "come and go", but become a symbol of the most significant human endeavors: to understand the world, to understand ourselves, and to understand that we socially share our lives.

This book is, simply speaking, a unique book about a unique person.

This autobiography with introduction and epilogue plus DVD is essential Luria reading. It brings him to life in the present era when traumatic brain injuries in Iraq make Luria's work more relevant than ever. Beyond simplistic brain localization of psychological functions, Luria attuned us to the fundamental importance of phenomelogical processes essential in rehabilitation.

Luria's Autobiography is an immensely readable book. It is also very informative about the lasting contributions that Luria made in many fields of psychology, from his work on language and thinking to the neurosurgical rehabilitation of traumatized victims of the Second World War and the resulting creation of the discipline of neuropsychology. For me personally, the most valuable feature of the autobiography was Luria's account, in Chapter 3, of the work that he did in collaboration with Vygotsky, which provides an easy to understand and succinct overview of their aim "to create a new, comprehensive approach to human psychological processes." Having read what Luria did, both in his own work and in preserving the sociohistorical tradition that he, Vygotsky and Leont'ev initiated, one can see why Toulmin wrote "Luria was Beethoven to Vygotsky, and Vygotsky can be seen as the Mozart of psychology."
This new edition of the Autobiography is subtitled A Dialogue with the Making of Mind. The dialogue takes the form of several chapters: a preface that puts Luria's text in its historical and intellectual context; an Epilogue by Michael Cole entitled A Portrait of Luria; and two further chapters by Cole and Karl Levitin, which provide a rounded picture of Luria as a human being and of his intellectual and moral tenacity in managing to sustain his driving interests through the changes in the nature of his professional work that were forced on him by the political upheavals that took place during the years of Stalinism.
It is to Luria, in great part, that we owe the survival of Vygotsky's work. What this autobiography makes clear is how much Luria himself contributed to that legacy and to the evergrowing, world-wide interest in socio-cultural-historical theory and its conceptualization of the Making of Mind.

The book is a second addition of Luria's autobiography that was first published in 1979 under the tile " The Making of Mind. A personal account of Soviet Psychology", accompanied with the attachment "Luria in retrospect" written by a distinguished American cross-cultural researcher and theoretician Michael Cole and a Russian science journalist Karl Levitin. Of special interest is the Preface, in which the above authors set up an ambitious goal of bringing together Luria's own account of his scientific life and "the extraordinary social context that accompanied and often shaped the lines of work" described in that account.
The new materials included are of great interest, particularly for western readers whose ideas about being a scientist in the Soviet Union tend to be limited by stereotypes, such as GULAG and Stalin's repressions. In reality, the link between a social context and the development of scientific ideas is a complex and indirect one. For instance, a prominent Russian and Soviet philosopher Alexej Losev went all the way through GULAG, yet he remained faithful to the great traditions of European philosophy and published his top class philosophical works at the same time with Luria. While I agree that Luria's work has indeed been framed in an extraordinary social context (the Russian revolution, the Great and the Second world wars, Stalin's persecutions), I don't think that this context had a final word in shaping Luria's evolution as a scientist. For instance, the episode when Luria is persuading his student Goldberg to join the Communist Party, with Goldberg politely avoiding the offer, is curious and a characteristic feature of that time, but the reader learns little from it about either Luria or Goldberg as scientists. It is true that Luria's life and career were aggravated by the political situation in the country, but so were the lives of most Russian intelligentsia, among whom Luria was yet one of the luckiest. The Epilogue written by Michael Cole is interesting and rich in personal detail but tends to explain major shifts in Luria's science career by changes in the political atmosphere in the Soviet Union rather then by the inner logic of Luria's growth as a psychologist. For instance, the late 1930th, when Luria dropped his cross-cultural research, was a tough time indeed, but this does not explain why Luria never returned to these studies in later and much easier times. Most importantly, the new materials miss the real drama of Luria's life as a scientist - the drama that, indirectly, emerges from Luria's own account.
This drama began in the 1920, when Luria, as a young scientist, was confronted with the two possible ways of approaching the human mind: the explanatory and the "descriptive" ones. The explanatory mode modelled a study of the mind on the study of natural phenomena, by establishing "causal" links between stimuli (the causes) and reactions (the effects), and the descriptive mode drew on the fact that an individual (a scientist) has a privileged access to his or her own mind and can therefore, directly observe the effects that the stimuli produce. Having tried himself in both approaches (reactological and phenomenological ones), Luria dreamed of finding "a third way" - an objective way of studying human emotions "that were an integral part of people's real life"(p.36). The way that Luria followed in his studies of "The nature of human conflicts" (1976) (establishing the links between verbal stimuli and combined verbal and motor reactions) was objective but completely within the existing "reactological" approach. This way did not satisfy Luria as it was missing the rich phenomenology of human emotions (e.g., was not part of people's real life), and the phenomenological approaches offered by psychoanalysis and Dilthey's "descriptive psychology" seemed to lack objectivity. He was not clear about what this third way should be like. Luria was unaware that the impossibility of the "third way" had been shown three hundred years ago by Renee Descartes (1993/1641), and even in greater detail about a hundred years later by Immanuel Kant (1929/1781). More strangely, he paid no attention to the important and philosophically profound works on that matter published by his older contemporaries and compatriots Grot, Lopatin, Astaf'ev, and Chelpanov (see, for instance, Grot, 1889, and others in this volume). It is also clear from Luria's account that both Chelpanov and Pavlov, though from two opposite positions, clearly understood the inevitability of the dual (e.g., mentalistic and behavioristic) way of studying the mind. Coincidentally, Chelpanov (a founder of the first Russian psychology institute) fell a victim of the revolutionary political games for his "philosophical idealism", and the whole line of the Russian neo-Kantian tradition in philosophy and psychology was terminated. In his memoirs, Luria mentioned this tradition only collaterally, as an influence of German psychology of the XIXth century on psychology in Russia - the factor that in his view was impeding, rather then promoting, progress of psychology. "I found little of value in the dry, pre-Revolutionary academic psychology..., which was strongly influenced by German philosophy and psychology" -- Luria writes (p.21). "Most psychologists were still working out problems that had been set many years before by Wilhelm Wundt, the Wurzburg school, and the neo-Kantian philosophers" - he continues. So, when young Luria entered the battlefield of methodological debates in psychology, he was full of energy and hope to find his own way to the human mind - the way different from those two that have been found before.
One can only speculate to what extent Luria could have benefited in his later career had he considered seriously the lessons of the European philosophical tradition of approaching the mind. For instance, Wund published a fundamental multivolume "Volkerpsychologie" in which he showed that individual psychology can not be understood properly without taking into account the fact that it is influenced by cultural traditions, myth and religion (see Green, 2001). So, there was no need in rediscovering the cultural-historical approach. There was also no need in wasting time for the search of the "third way" - the two ways that existed were good enough to accommodate Luria's great talent as an experimental researcher.
In his struggle for the "third way to the human mind", Luria put his hopes in Vygotsky who was obsessed by the same idea of "revolutionizing" psychology via finding the objective way of studying subjective phenomena. For some time, it seemed to Luria that Vygotsky found the solution: "The naturalists and mentalists had artificially dismembered psychology. It was his goal, and our task, to create a new system that would synthesize these conflicting approaches" (p.41). Of course, Vygotsky's "third way" to the human mind (which he called "cultural-historical" or "instrumental" approach) was an illusion. The "instruments" or "mediators" -- language being by far the most powerful of them -- were nothing but auxiliary attachments to stimuli that made the connections between stimuli and reactions more complex and less predictable. In the extreme case, predictive power of these overcomplicated stimuli, such as culture, becomes so poor that it enters the grey area of guesses. For instance, in his classic cross-cultural study of thinking Luria assumed that analytical (formal logical) orientation of thinking is a result of the western type school education, yet recent developmental research has shown that this orientation can be traced even in 4-year-old children (Harris, 2000).
When Luria started his studies on the brain localisation of psychological functions, he was faced with a dilemma again: the phrenology type "strict localisation" theorists versus holistic theorists who "assumed that the brain functions as a whole to produce the psychological functions expressed in behavior" (p.120). As before, Luria voted for the "middle way" - this time quite successfully, as long as both of the extreme theories, as well as Luria's own "functional system" theory, sat comfortably within the reactological paradigm of studying the human mind. Although Luria never stopped mentioning his work with Vygotsky, since the late 30th his romance with the "cultural-historical" theory was over, and he was well back on the track of the reactological approach, by developing behavior based methods for diagnostics and rehabilitation of brain disorders. Here, Vygotsky's concept of higher mental functions proved useful, because it rejected the idea of a rigid link between brain and behavior. Instead, the idea of the systemic structure of "higher mental functions" implied that the link between a function (behavior) and the brain is loose and flexible, and, if damaged, can often be restored by using various auxiliary stimuli. Developing and using these methods, for which Luria coined the term "neropsychological", resulted in his most outstanding achievement: the book "Higher cortical functions in man" (Luria, 1980). Studies on orienting reflex (in cooperation with Sokolov), and on the executive function in children proved quite fruitful as well. Yet, Luria realized that explanatory approach that he devoted most of his studies to was still missing the most important and essential part of the mind - phenomenalistic experience. This realization resulted in his two essays "The Mind of a Mnemonist" and "The Man with a Shattered World', both of which relied on the phenomenological descriptive method which Luria now called "romantic science". However, Luria never considered these phenomenological writings as a match to his reactology based neuropsychological research.
I was a student of Luria in 1971-1973. On Luria's suggestion, we studied the development of programmed behaviour in 2- to 5-year-old children. As a method, we used the "double stimulation" (by visual and verbal commands) of children's actions, similar to that used in the studies of frontal lobe patients. Thought in his early 70th and suffering from a hart condition, Alexander Romanovitch was as energetic and enthusiastic as ever when talking about his beloved executive function and the regulatory role of speech on behaviour. The results of this study were quite interesting (Luria and Subbotsky, 1978), yet very soon I got bored of this approach, viewing it as a version of Luria's earlier studies on the regulatory role of speech in children. But whenever I tried to persuade Luria to change the emphasis of our research in the direction of social, moral and personality development of children, Luria was reluctant to talk about it - reluctant to the extent that suggested a complete lack of interest. Having acquired a worldwide recognition of his studies, Luria was already too tired or too busy to attempt something really new. Or was venturing in these areas going too far away from the solid ground of brain functions and into the misty territory of philosophical debates? In my premature interest to theoretical issues, did I remind him the early years of his own career when theoretical mistakes hade been made? I don't know. But I do remember that Luria was never tired of saying to me "Hold on a theory, attend to simple methodical issues first, the theory will come later". So, how did it happen that a scientist whose attitude towards deep theory was rather cold still managed to achieve so much?
Saying he was well educated and talented is saying not enough. Luria had extraordinary intuition for what they now call experimental cognitive research. It is true that his studies on combined motor reactions, cross-cultural studies on thinking, studies on identical twins were decades ahead of his time. In the 1950th, just before Piaget's studies on cognitive development came into fashion, he and his students extensively studied the development of executive function in children - a hot topic in contemporary cognitive developmental research. His battery of neuropsychological tests is still in great demand in both clinical practice and experimental research. He was a workaholic as well.
In the end of his Epilogue, Michael Cole recalls being present at a dispute at the University of California when the same dilemma of "explanatory versus descriptive approaches to the mind" was discussed that Luria had been faced with more than half a century before. Well, some lessons are never learned. At least, there was no a "third way" proposed in this discussion. "It is indeed ideas that endure. But it is human beings who give them life" - Cole concludes. May be yes, may be no. Perhaps, Plato was right and ideas exist independently of man. Even so, only chosen are lucky to catch a glimpse of them on a back wall of the cave, and Luria was one of them.






Bibliography

Descartes (1993). Meditations on first philosophy. Selected philosophical writings,
Cambridge University Press. (Original work published in 1641)
Green, D. (2001) Classics in the History of Psychology.
YorkUniversity,Toronto,Ontario http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Wundt/Folk/intro.htm
Grot, N.Ja. (1881). The critique of the concept of free will. In "Works of the
Moscow Psychological Society", Moscow, issue III, p.1-96.
Harris, P.L. (2000).The work of the imagination. Oxford: Blackwell.
Kant, I. (1929). Critique of pure reason. London: MacMillan (original work published
in 1781).
Luria, A.R. (1976). The nature of human conflicts, or emotion, conflict and will. New
York: Liveright.
Luria, A.R. (1980) Higher cortical functions in man. New York: Basic Books.
Luria, A.R., and Subbotsky, E.V. (1978). Zur frühen Ontogeneze der steuerden
Funktion der Sprache. In: Die Psychologie des 20 Jahrhunderts, Zürich: Kinder Verlag, pp.1032-1048



Eugene Subbotsky
Lancaster University, Psychology Department
Lancaster, LA1 4YF, UK
E.Subbotsky@lancaster.ac.uk

In this 2005 book, the life of Alexander Romanovich Luria is composed through various attempts to understand and preserve that life. With the additional sections of this book (prologue, epilogue, DVD) that enhance his original autobiography, the reader comes away with the notion that it often takes a few different versions and perspectives to weave together a mosaic of a life and come away with a more complex picture than any one perspective can offer. Therefore the prologue, epilogue and two chapters that put Luria's life in social and personal context breathe life into the otherwise dry and distant autobiography.
In the final section of the book entitled "Luria in Personal Context," the reader learns that Luria "could not write truthfully about the linkages between his personal experience and his scientific work without sever reprisals from the State." Although Luria never states this fact in his own 1979 autobiography, the pressures of the times in the USSR become especially apparent to the reader in the epilogue and the two following sections of the 2005 book. Thus studying an autobiography from a man who lived in a severely repressive social context is a very interesting exercise in observing what happens to a life story when pieces are left out or the life is censored. In Luria's case, his life was censored by the Soviet copyright agency (VAAP) but also by Luria himself, who "firmly believed that the facts of his personal life were of fleeting interest . . ." (255). Luria's telling of his life focuses mainly on his academic studies and research in neuroscience and psychology and therefore comes across as a sort of skeleton of a life story. In reading the epilogue and especially the last two sections and also watching the interviews on the DVD, the reader is able to connect to the life of Luria much more and begin to piece together a more comprehensive picture of his life.
Thus Luria's life is revealed in a much fuller and more personal way by outside people such as Cole, Levitin and the interviewees. Because it is very difficult to relate to the Luria in the 1979 autobiography on a personal level, the interviews really give life to the personal struggles and political pressures faced by this leading Soviet psychologist during his tumultuous lifetime.
Furthermore, with the 2005 book the reader is given fragments of a life that range from clinical research, personal interviews, entries from "The Great Revolution" diary written by Luria during the period of civil war in Russia, an account of a young American psychologist and an attempt to put Luria's life into a social and personal context. Therefore the reader is given a range of perspectives that show Luria as the psychologist, the Russian intellectual, the friend, the father, the teacher and the husband whose environment brought chaos and fear alongside of excitement and invention. Finally, Luria says on page 43 that "Man in not only a product of his environment, he is also an active agent in creating that environment." Thus it becomes very clear that his life was driven by what the social and political context of the times allow but also by individual agency. It was Luria's passion and ambition to create a well-rounded and complex psychology that combined laboratory analysis with simple observation and considered the influence of the social environment that allowed this man to make long-lasting contributions to the field of psychology. Furthermore, the realization that he could have control over what he chose to do in the given circumstances of his environment also allowed Luria live in various directions, engaging in different fields of medicine and psychology and interacting with many patients, colleagues, students, friends and admirers.
Furthermore, Michael Cole's investigation into Luria's work and life is motivated a passion to figure out and do justice to the life of this Soviet psychologist. In Cole's contributions to the 2005 book, it is as if he is trying to fill in the blanks of Luria's life left by the ellipses in the 1979 autobiography. Thus the 2005 book comes across as an attempt to know the person, not only the milestones and accomplishments of a life but also the motivations and emotions that drove such a life. Therefore Cole's curiosity and need for a personal connection to Luria, which is difficult to extract from the 1979 autobiography, allows this story to come alive. Cole immediately puts Luria's life story is into context in the preface, using orientation clauses in a very comprehensive and straight-forward narrative, telling the reader that Luria was born in Kazan in 1902, that he was one of the leading psychologists of the 20th century and that he died in 1977. Cole also points out to the reader that "No where did Alexander Romanovich hint at the complex ideological and institutional constraints that had produced his various research careers . . ." (222). This great difference between what the two men thought a life story should contain is especially apparent in the motivations given by each man to write the two books: First, Luria states in his autobiography, "People come and go, but the creative sources of great historical events and their important ideas and deeds remain" (188). He calls this his "excuse" for writing his life story and therefore one comes to realize why he focuses on his ideas and studies rather than his personal life. Similarly, Cole reveals his own reason from writing the 2005 book in the last sentence of the epilogue: "It is indeed ideas that endure. But it is human beings who give them life" (225). Therefore Cole is interested in giving life to the human being behind the ideas by paying homage to Luria himself with a completely different version of his life. With this motivation to look at the human being, Cole softens Luria's autobiography by guiding the reader to see Luria in a new way by revealing personal information about the focused life.
After reading Cole's prologue and epilogue and realizing that Luria was a very passionate and humanistic neuropsychologist, a good host, a great "adopted father" and teacher to many pupils and a loyal friend, the reader realizes that the 1979 life story of Luria that relies solely on his work is a self-effacing and therefore incomplete representation of this man. It therefore takes Cole's contribution to this life story along with the interviews by Cole and Levitin to fill in the personal life of Luria, which nicely complements his own autobiography.

I'm soooo happy that I bought this book! It's a very thorough combination of a library of signs we can use to communicate with infants, beautiful music to use with the signs, and a lot of VERY GOOD ideas for crafts to accompany the related topic. The author was right, "Roll the Ball" is a HIT in any small child class. The book also has an index of related sources, websites and ect for signing for children. Though this book is designed for "babies" I think it's also good for toddlers (or the almost walking age). I mentioned this book on a discussion for small children and the discussion about the book is REALLY picking up!

Tim's Kids
Children's language circle
Japan

I am very excited about this book as I am a music teacher always looking for new things. Although I haven't yet incorporated this in my classes I cannot wait to start as the ideas in this book has given me renewed enthusiasm and I feel energised again.

This book and the music CD is a staple at our house. My daughter has loved all the music since she was under 1, and now she is 2 and still asks to listen to it. My daughter started signing at 7 months and knew more than 25 signs at a year old.... and I owe it all to the Sing and Sign program. It is fantastic! You can't go wrong with this book... especially since it also has a great music CD to listen to anytime.

I am a music therapist in Kansas City and also a mom to a 3 year old and 1 year old. This book gets as much use in the classroom as it does at home!

I teach special needs children ages 3-12 and I have used this book and the accompanying recording in all my classes. Several teachers have purchased the book themselves! My own children love the songs and and the signs. I get frequent requests at school and at home for the Baby Sing and Sign!

I was lucky enough to take this author's class with my son in KC. After a few months of signing to him, he began signing nonstop around age 11 months. It helped immensely to reduce his frustration (and mine!) in communicating his needs and wants. He learned new signs quickly and his vocabulary/recognition of new objects grew immensely in the months to follow. Now that he is 2, his verbal skills are highly advanced (he speaks very clearly and can compose complex sentences), and I firmly believe this is due to the strong language base he started with the signing programs.

The songs and games in this book are still some of his favorites! Glad to see this great resource is available to parents everywhere! Thanks Anne!

"The Bachelor of Arts" is the second of a thematic trilogy that begins with "Swami and Friends" and ends with "The English Teacher"--three novels that collectively take their characters from the innocence of youth through the disappointment of love to life's first tragedy. Yet this tale of Chandran, a college graduate unlucky in love, is (as Graham Greene notes in his introduction) "a funny and happy book" at its core--particularly when compared to Narayan's later melancholy, tragic books--yet a closer reading shows us the "shadow [that] had been there from the beginning."

The first part of "Bachelor" is an unexpected treat: a farcical, satirical look at the sillier, exhausting rituals of academic life in colonial India. The opening scene features a debate on whether "historians should be slaughtered first"--and Chandran, a history student himself, is required to argue in the affirmative. From there, our poor student is appointed by his professor as secretary of the school's new Historical Association, an honor that adds to his duties but hardly helps his studies. In between, he frequents the cinema with his best friend and dutifully maps out a grand plan for exam preparation--a plan that is revised daily due to the impossibility of following it.

The debate society, his friends, his academic career--all has been poor preparation for life's setbacks. ("The classroom or the club or the office created friendships. When the circumstances changed the relations, too, snapped.") The giddiness of the novel takes a sharp turn when the circumstances do change: Chandran falls in love at first sight and is rejected, causing him to cast aside the comforts of life and to leave home. The rest of the novel follows our Bachelor of Arts (still a bachelor in life) as he educates himself about the one subject neglected during his collegiate career: himself. It's such a simple and simply told story, but it illustrates beautifully the complexities of finding one's place in the world.

I could identify with the main character as he completed his studies and began moving into the 'real' world. His spiritual journey, though not complete at the books end, was very interesting. The (paraphrased) line "they thought they were the first of their type and the last..", referring to his radical friends from his university days, struck a chord. We all slowly realize that our own well-used mold was indeed not broken after they made us. More followed. Alas, we all take our place in society and make the best of it.

Simply written and easy to read. I recommend it.

I have read and liked R K Narayan's works in the past. I picked this one up just based on the fact that it was written by him. It was not recommended to me by anyone. And honestly i am so glad i did.
The main character is a student just out of undergrad and facing the decision of what ahead. In a very straight and simple manner Narayan portrays the character's struggles with choosing a career and then his foray into love. Its simple and yet extraordinary. BTW for those expecting a dramatic ending, don't. This book just ends. I had to turn the page to realise its finished :-)

The story of Chandran, a final-year student of History, on how love tranforms ambitions, alters goals and changes lives is the theme of this wonderful book.

Written masterfully with just the right amounts of comedy, emotions and twists, and teeming with sarcasm characteristic of Narayan, this book takes a broad look at values and customs. For example, the long scenes wheres discussion about horoscopes and Chandran's disagreement with his mother are all so very close to life in India.

A great book, an excellent read....

A very pleasant and interesting look at the life of a young man in South Asia. Only moderately engaged by his studies at the university, Chandran spends most of his time going to movies, staying out late, drinking at the café, and generally socializing with his friends. With some prodding from his father, he overcomes his laziness sufficiently to graduate, only to find his problems just beginning.

Chandran's predicament should be very familiar to many readers. Bright and charismatic, but lacking any real focus, he has difficulty finding employment. Upon graduation his peer group separates, and he needs to make new friends. And his parents, who are only eager to see him make something of himself, can't help but find fault with his carefree, unproductive lifestyle. What's a Bachelor of Arts to do? His unrequited love for a young girl named Malathi makes for an interesting look at how courting was handled in traditional Indian families not so many decades ago, complete with horoscopes and dowries and class consciousness. But ultimately, isn't it the couples' willingness to commit to each other that matters, and not how they happen to meet? Every bit as fascinating is Chandran's sojourn as an ascetic, which is reminiscent of a Hermann Hesse novel, but with a uniquely critical perspective that only a native Indian could provide.

Narayan's prose has a warm serenity that never fails to evoke small-town South Asia. What his plots lack in excitement and intensity, they make up for in geniality. This particular novel has perhaps a little more excitement than some of the others, and would be a good entry point for young people just discovering Narayan.

Nightmares plague the narrator's childhood. In these dreams he relives the pre-stoneage life of one of his proto-human ancestors. Each night is a different episode from his ancestor's life, and the episodes are lived and relived in a jumbled, non-chronological order. The narrator places the episodes in chronological order and tells his ancestor's biography. What emerges is an action-packed, engaging saga of adventure and romance at the dawn of humanity.

London got the science of genetics wrong as he tried to explain how the narrator could have such memories, but he seems to have gotten one thing right. Modern paleo-anthropology posits that for most of prehistory, the earth contained several coexisting species of hominids. London peoples his world with three hominid species. His description of the interaction between these species probably gives an accurate depiction of ancient man's inter-species interaction.

In this short novella Jack London ('White Fang', 'The Call of the Wild', 'The Sea-Wolf') describes beings who lived at the dawn of mankind. You could call these creatures human, but they are still rudimentary beings. He tells a romance of the unknown ages populated with creatures that may have been.
Jack London's 'Before Adam' is a brilliant recreation of the dawn of humanity, describing the prehistoric world as a place of dark conflict where only the fittest will survive.
Would it be exaggerated to call it a journey to our own subconscious? A subconscious - as a hidden memory of the history of mankind - hidden so deep in our mind that it can only be reached by fiction.

I agree wholeheartedly that this is a very unique and interesting work (it's hard to even call it a novel or pin it down to another genre). The book is about a modern day protagonist who has nightmares about prehistoric life. As he becomes an adult, he posits a theory that these are the biological remnants of the experience of his distant prehistoric ancestor.

He pieces together the story from his dreams and what comes out is this book - a detailed and very graphic portayal of life before people were "people". Reading this, you are plunged into a whole different world, where the inhabitants are somewhere between people and the primate-ancestor on the evolutionary scale. It is an amazingly harsh and cruel existence with a truly "primitive" society. And yet, we get to love some of the central characters, empathise with them and marvel at this novel's description of the seeds or the birth of what we see as humanity in terms of resourcefulness and compassion.

The work also has a psychological and philosophical aspect as the modern day narrator wrestles with his "second I" and what his connection to his ancestor means to his identity. I've read several good prehistoric fiction works and this is the best - certainly the most profound - it really makes you think and amazes you.

While I'm not much into reading fiction or Sci-Fi type books; I have to say, this is probably one of the best books, I've ever read in my life. ( and I'm an avid reader)

Jack London has a way of really pulling your mind into the picture. ( Or putting pictures/stories inside your head)

If you're looking for a book to take your mind of things, or want to live a vicarious experience, I can think of no better book than this one.

This is one of Jack Londons stellar achievements. The ending will surprise you.

An awesome book, that you'll have trouble putting down, until you're finished.

I only started reading Jack London's work three years ago, but I've had an interest in prehistoric times and evolution since I was ten. When I tried explaining to other children that humans and apes may have evolved from a common ancestor they just sort of sneered in disbelief. This was over a hundred years after Charles Darwin had died.

Jack London's first SF novel "Before Adam" is an imaginitive, compelling read. Through his dreams, a twentieth century man "remembers" events from another time and place - a life lived at the dawn of time. The narrator "Big-Tooth" shows us the harsh brutality of prehistoric life, the endless struggle to survive, the constant danger posed by predators looking for food, and the menace of the "Fire Men" - a race more advanced than the species Big-Tooth belongs to, a race that have learned to use fire and kill prey with bows and arrows. It's very rare for anyone to live beyond middle age. Most people die violent deaths, either at the hands of a rival, or satisfying the hunger of a beast.

This is not the first story with a prehistoric setting (Jack London was apparently accused of plagiarism by another author, Stanley Waterloo), but it's a wonderful book nevertheless. London later wrote a book with a similar premise called "The Star Rover", in which a condemned prisoner puts himself into a trance and experiences his past lives. It's possible that J.G. Ballard had also read "Before Adam" before writing "The Drowned World", another book about race memory and the retreat into prehistory. There's a lot of psychology in it.

As a species we've certainly come a long way, or so we like to think. The slaughter initiated by the Fire Men looking for living space has been repeated time and time again. Our "intelligence" has enabled us to come up with more ingenious ways to kill each other, moving from bows and arrows to guns to weapons of mass destruction. From what can be seen on television or read in newspapers, it seems we're still a long way from "growing up". Jack London's novel should teach us not to be complacent.