Product Description

This text connects two worlds that do not often meet - that of neuropsychology and cognitive science with Freudian theory and Jungian approaches to mythology and narrative. Peterson shows the reader that there is an empirical connection between what technologically sophisticated neuroscience tells us about the brain and behaviour, and what ritual, myths, and religious stories have long narrated. This connection has applications that play a key role in understanding human emotions and motivations for social conflict.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1036888 in Books
• Published on: 1999-03-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 567 pages

Craig Lambert, Harvard Magazine, September-October 1998
... a sweeping theory of narrative, belief, meaning and religion... the book's bibliography ranges through existentialist philosophers and literary critics, as well as Dante, Dostoevsky, Goethe, Stephen Hawking, C.G. Jung, Lao Tzu, Konrad Lorenz, brain scientist A.R. Luria, Milton, Nietzsche, Piaget, Solzhenitsyn, Voltaire and Wittgenstein... a grand, sprawling, ambitious undertaking, an intellectual adventure that aims to synthesize disparate knowledge in the classic, old-fashioned tradition of social science.

From the Back Cover
Why have people from different cultures and eras formulated myths and stories with similar structures? What does this similarity tell us about the mind, morality, and the structure of the world itself? Maps of Meaning offers a provocative new hypothesis that explores the connection between what modern neuropsychology tells us about the brain and what rituals, myths and religious stories have long narrated. Drawing insights from the worlds of neuropsychology, cognitive science, and Freudian and Jungian approaches to mythology and narrative, Jordan B. Peterson argues that myths and religious stories have a structure determined by the nature of the mind, and play a key role in the regulation of human emotions.

Ambitious in scope and daring in its exploration of ideas, Maps of Meaning presents a rich theory that makes the wisdom and meaning of myth accessible to the critical modern mind.

About the Author
Jordan B. Peterson is a clinical psychologist and Professor at the University of Toronto and was formerly at Harvard University. He has published numerous articles on drug abuse, alcoholism and aggression.