In this lecture, 04 and 05 combined, I discuss the relationship between the initiatory structure characteristic of shamanism and the process of radical personality transformation, self- or therapy-induced. The basic structure is order/paradise, chaos/the fall, re-establishment of order/paradise. Since all paradises fall, however, the true paradise is identification with the process of transformation itself.

Personality and Its Transformations

3. Heroic and Shamanic Initiations

In this lecture, I talk about the great developmental psychologist Jean Piaget, who was interested, above all, in the way that knowledge is generated and transforms. His analysis of the development of morality in children, which relates early play to social cooperation and competition,  is particularly profound.

4. Jean Piaget and Constructivism

In this lecture, I use Disney's Lion King to further illustrate the basic principles of the personality and clinical theories of Dr. Carl Gustav Jung, student of Nietzsche and Freud, originator of analytical psychology, and great interpreter of mythology and archetype.

5. Carl Jung and the Lion King, Part 1

In this lecture, 02 and 03 combined, I provide some historical context for the understanding of personality, suggesting that the clinical theories, concerned with the transformation and improvement of personality and character, are embedded within a classic narrative/mythological structure.

2. Historical and Mythological Context

In this lecture, I finish my analysis of Disney's Lion King, which provides a dramatic representation of many of the archetypes identified and analyzed by Dr. Carl Gustav Jung, student of Nietzsche and Freud, and originator of analytical psychology.

6. Carl Jung and the Lion King, Part 2

In this lecture, 9th in the 2017 series, I discuss some of the essential of Sigmund Freud's theories, concentrating on his conceptualizations of the dynamic (living) unconscious.

7. Freud and the Dynamic Unconscious

1. Introduction

In this lecture, 10th in the 2017 series, I begin to talk about Dr. Carl Rogers, a humanist psychotherapist in the phenomenological tradition, and an expert on listening and embodied wisdom. Dr. Rogers offers very profound and practical lessons on the value of truthful relationships.

8. Humanism and Phenomenology: Carl Rogers

In this lecture, 11th in the 2017 series, I discuss the giants of existentialism, a philosophically-grounded psychological position positing (1) that psychopathology or mental illness/distress is built into Being itself and (2) that the adoption of responsibility through action is the appropriate response.

9. Existentialism: Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, and Kierkegaard

In this lecture, 12th in the 2017 series, I discuss the Heidegger's phenomenological philosophy of Being, interpreted through the eyes of the psychotherapists Ludwig Binswanger and Medard Boss. The phenomenologists were attempting to to reduce the painful separation between object and subject that has as one of its consequence the elimination of meaning from existence.

10. Phenomenology: Heidegger, Binswanger, and Boss

Episodes

All Episodes

This lecture series concentrates to a large degree on philosophical and neuroscientific issues, related to personality. It is divided into five primary topics, following an introduction and overview. The first half of the course deals with classic, clinical issues of personality; the second, with biological and psychometric issues.

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