Wisdom of the Psyche: Depth Psychology After Neuroscience Book

This book investigates that aspect of the psyche that seeks to destroy relationships, to leave, to go down and stay low for as long as it takes for the old identity to die. Revisiting the basic principles of depth psychology, Paris explores the ways in which the body manifests what the psyche refuses to see.

In a language largely free of clinical jargon, the author shows how this turning inward and downward comes from the unconscious sense that if the exhausted old "me" does not die, the body will execute the death wish in a very literal fashion. Contrary to most self-help books of popular psychology, the way out of those destructive states does not start with an upward, positive, willful effort of the ego. It begins with an opening of the imagination, producing dark twisted frightening images, because one has to imagine what needs to die.