A Psychohistory of Metaphors

Envisioning Time, Space, and Self through the Centuries

By (author) Brian J. McVeigh

Not available to order

Publication date:

04 April 2016

Length of book:

244 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9781498520294

How have figures of speech configured new concepts of time, space, and mind throughout history? Brian J. McVeigh answers this question in A Psychohistory of Metaphors: Envisioning Time, Space, and Self through the Centuries by exploring “meta-framing:” our ever-increasing capability to “step back” from the environment, search out its familiar features to explain the unfamiliar, and generate “as if” forms of knowledge and metaphors of location and vision. This book demonstrates how analogizing and abstracting have altered spatio-visual perceptions, expanding our introspective capabilities and allowing us to adapt to changing social circumstances.

Foreword

Acknowledgments and Notes to Reader

Prologue - Explaining History's “Inward Turn”
– Chapter 1 - My Search for Heaven and Hell
– Chapter 2 - Purposes and Premises: Tracing the Trajectories of Human Experience
– Chapter 3 - The Magic of Metaphors: How Our Minds Make the World
– Chapter 4 - Unpacking the “Black Box” of Conscious Interiority

Part One - Space: Hollowing Out the Person
– Chapter 5 - Envisioning the Invisible: Spatializing the Soul
– Chapter 6 - Invoking Introspectable Worlds
– Chapter 7 - The Collapse of Premodern Cosmology

Part Two - Psyche: The Origins of Scientific Psychology
– Chapter 8 - The Foundations of the Modern Study of Mind
– Chapter 9 - The Great Cosmic Split: Dualism
– Chapter 10 - Reactions to the Cartesian Split
– Chapter 11 - Early Psychology: Making Visible the Contents of the Soul

Part Three - Time: Modern Millenarianism and Politics as “Progress”
– Chapter 12 - Meta-Framing Time: The Invention of History
– Chapter 13 - Liberating the Psyche: The Emerging Faith in Progress
– Chapter 14 - The History of Humankind: Climbing the Ladder of Civilization
– Chapter 15 - Envisaging the Future as Paradise

Part Four - Self: Turning the World Inside Out
– Chapter 16 - The Changeable Self through the Centuries
– Chapter 17 - The Narratized Individual as Social Actor
– Chapter 18 - The Self as Mirror in Historical Perspective
– Chapter 19 - The Birth of Modern Psychology

Epilogue - Visualizing New Vistas of Modernity and Selfhood
– Chapter 20 - The Therapeutic Turn
– Chapter 21 - Self-Idolatry: The Dark Side of the Psychotherapeutic Society
– Chapter 22 - Modern Spatiality, the Soul, and the Psyche

Appendix A: How to Open the “Black Box”: Cultural Psychology

Appendix B: What Conscious Interiority Is Not

Appendix C: Spaces: Real and Imaginary

Appendix D: The Visible, Invisible, and Introspectable
References

Index

About the Author

McVeigh extends the work of the psychologist Julian Jaynes by revealing the close coupling between the character of the interior self and the ever-changing social context . . . A Psychohistory of Metaphors is a welcome and important contribution to our understanding of the conscious narrative self. But beyond its standing as an invaluable resource, it is also a pleasure to read. With personal stories of McVeigh’s childhood wonderings about the locations of heaven and hell, for example, seamlessly woven into texts of academic excellence, the book is as engaging as it is informative. With such depth and commitment to scholarship, this book promises to be a source of continual surprises and understandings over multiple readings. It is one of those books to keep close by on the shelf for many years to come.