China on the Mind

<p>Several thousand years ago Indo-European culture diverged into two ways of thinking; one went West, the other East. Tracing their differences, Christopher Bollas examines how these mentalities are now converging once again, notably in the practice of psychoanalysis. </p><p>Creating a freely associated comparison between western psychoanalysts and eastern philosophers, Bollas demonstrates how the Eastern use of poetry evolved as a collective way to house the individual self. On one hand he links this tradition to the psychoanalytic praxes of Winnicott and Khan<b>, </b>which he relates to Daoism in their privileging of solitude and non verbal forms of communicating. On the other, Bollas examines how Jung, Bion and Rosenfeld<b>, </b>assimilate the Confucian ethic that sees the individual and group mind as a collective, while Freudian psychoanalysis he argues has provided an unconscious meeting place of both viewpoints. </p><p>Bollas’s intriguing book will be of interest to psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, Orientalists, and those concerned with cultural studies.</p> <p>Introduction. Part I: Moments. Self as Poem. Rites of Passage. Part II: Life’s Gate. Spiritual Integration.To the Task Inwardly. Inaction Happiness. Part III: Cultivation. Rifts in Civilization. Lost in Thought. Group Mind. Possibilities. Coda.</p>