Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief

by Peterson,Jordan B.

• ISBN13: 9780415922210
• ISBN10: 0415922216
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-04-12
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

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 Meaningoffers 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 Meaningpresents a rich theory that makes the wisdom and meaning of myth accessible to the critical modern mind.

Table of Contents

PREFACE Descensus ad Inferos	xi
1 Maps of Experience: Object and Meaning	1	(18)
2 Maps of Meaning: Three Levels of Analysis	19	(197)
Normal and Revolutionary Life: Two Prosaic Stories	20	(12)
Normal Life	23	(6)
Revolutionary Life	29	(3)
Neuropsychological Function: The Nature of the Mind	32	(57)
The Valence of Things	32	(9)
Unexplored Territory: Phenomenology and Neuropsychology	41	(7)
Exploration: Phenomenology and Neuropsychology	48	(13)
Explored Territory: Phenomenolgy and Neuropsychology	61	(28)
Mythological Representation: The Constituent Elements of Experience	89	(127)
Introduction	91	(17)
The Enuma elish: A Comprehensive Exemplar of Narrative Categorization	108	(23)
The Dragon of Primordial Chaos	137	(11)
The Great Mothers: Images of the Unknown, or Unexplored Territory	148	(28)
The Divine Son: Images of the Knower, the Exploratory Process	176	(11)
The Great Father: Images of the Know, or Explored Territory	187	(29)
3 Apprenticeship and Enculturation: Adoption of a Shared Map	216	(17)
4 The Appearance of Anomaly: Challenge to the Shared Map	233	(74)
Introduction: The Paradigmatic Structure of the Known	234	(11)
Particular Forms of Anomaly	245	(38)
The Strange	246	(3)
The Stranger	249	(2)
The Strange Idea	251	(20)
The Revolutionary Hero	271	(12)
The Rise of Self-Reference, and the Permanent Contamination of Anomaly with Death	283	(24)
5 The Hostile Brothers: Archetypes of Response to the Unknown	307	(139)
Introduction: The Hero and the Adversary	308	(3)
The Adversary: Emergence, Development and Representation	311	(57)
The Adversary in Action: Voluntary Degradation of the Map of Meaning	324	(18)
The Adversary in Action: A Twentieth Century Allegory	342	(26)
Heroic Adaptation: Voluntary Reconstruction of the Map of Meaning	368	(32)
The Creative Illness and the Hero	370	(30)
The Alchemical Procedure and the Philosopher's Stone	400	(46)
Introductory Note	400	(7)
The "Material World" as Archaic "Locus of the Unknown"	407	(10)
Episodic Representation in Medieval Christendom	417	(7)
The Prima Materia	424	(4)
The King of Order	428	(1)
The Queen of Chaos	429	(3)
The Peregrination	432	(7)
The Conjunction	439	(7)
Conclusion: The Divinity of Interest	446	(25)
Introduction	447	(9)
The Divinity of Interest	456	(15)
Notes	471	(32)
References	503	(10)
Permissions	513	(2)
Index	515