Muses, Madmen, and Prophets

Muses, Madmen, and Prophets PDF Author: Daniel B. Smith
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9781594201103
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
Smith presents the strange history of auditory hallucination and reevaluates the popular conception of the phenomenon today and through the ages. He reveals the roots of the medical understanding and treatment of it along with its relationship to the nature of pure faith.

Muses, Madmen, and Prophets

Muses, Madmen, and Prophets PDF Author: Daniel B. Smith
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9781594201103
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 282

Get Book

Book Description
Smith presents the strange history of auditory hallucination and reevaluates the popular conception of the phenomenon today and through the ages. He reveals the roots of the medical understanding and treatment of it along with its relationship to the nature of pure faith.

Muses, Madmen, and Prophets

Muses, Madmen, and Prophets PDF Author: Daniel B. Smith
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101202122
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
An inquiry into hearing voices-one of humanity's most profound phenomena Auditory hallucination is one of the most awe-inspiring, terrifying, and ill- understood tricks of which the human psyche is capable. In the age of modern medical science, we have relegated this experience to nothing more than a biological glitch. Yet as Daniel B. Smith puts forth in Muses, Madmen, and Prophets, some of the greatest thinkers, leaders, and prophets in history heard, listened to, and had dialogues with voices inside their heads. In a fascinating quest for understanding, Smith examines the history of this powerful phenomenon, and delivers a ringing defense of the validity of unusual human experiences.

Monkey Mind

Monkey Mind PDF Author: Daniel Smith
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439177317
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Shares the author's personal experiences with anxiety, describing its painful coherence and absurdities while sharing the stories of other sufferers to illustrate anxiety's intellectual history and influence.

Hallucinations

Hallucinations PDF Author: Oliver Sacks
Publisher: Knopf Canada
ISBN: 0307402193
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Hallucinations, for most people, imply madness. But there are many different types of non-psychotic hallucination caused by various illnesses or injuries, by intoxication--even, for many people, by falling sleep. From the elementary geometrical shapes that we see when we rub our eyes to the complex swirls and blind spots and zigzags of a visual migraine, hallucination takes many forms. At a higher level, hallucinations associated with the altered states of consciousness that may come with sensory deprivation or certain brain disorders can lead to religious epiphanies or conversions. Drawing on a wealth of clinical examples from his own patients as well as historical and literary descriptions, Oliver Sacks investigates the fundamental differences and similarities of these many sorts of hallucinations, what they say about the organization and structure of our brains, how they have influenced every culture's folklore and art, and why the potential for hallucination is present in us all.

Hearing Voices

Hearing Voices PDF Author: Simon McCarthy-Jones
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107007224
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 471

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Book Description
A comprehensive exploration of the history, phenomenology, meanings and causes of hearing voices that others cannot hear (auditory verbal hallucinations).

The Voices Within

The Voices Within PDF Author: Charles Fernyhough
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465096816
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
We live immersed in thought. But do we actually know what a thought is? To answer this question, psychology professor Charles Fernyhough draws on everything from neuroscience to literary history to grasp the true nature of this most inscrutable of acts: thinking. Whether a medieval saint who hears voices or a writer absorbed in an imagined world, a daydreamer riding the subway or a captivated reader, we experience thought as a creative inner dialogue featuring multiple voices. Fernyhough uses this conception to demystify mental illness, showing that imagining voices is intimately linked to the feeling of artistic production. Drawing on literature, film, and psychology, as well as cognitive science, The Voices Within is a poetic venture into the depths of our mind. It will revolutionize the way we hear and understand the voices in our heads.

Sonic Phantoms

Sonic Phantoms PDF Author: Barbara Ellison
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501347047
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
In this book, Barbara Ellison and Thomas B. W. Bailey lay out and explore the mystifying and evanescent musical territory of 'sonic phantoms': auditory illusions within the musical material that convey a 'phantasmatic' presence. Structured around a large body of compositional work developed by Ellison over the past decade, sonic phantoms are revealed and illustrated as they arise through a diverse array of musical sources, materials, techniques, and compositional tools: voices (real and synthetic), field recordings, instrument manipulation, object amplification, improvisation, and recording studio techniques. Somehow inherent in all music--and perhaps in all sound--sonic phantoms lurk and stalk with the promise of mystery and elevation. We just need to conjure them.

The Magical and Sacred Medical World

The Magical and Sacred Medical World PDF Author: Éva Pócs
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527525791
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 541

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Book Description
This collection of papers explores the sacred and magical aspects of ethno-medicine. The subject area is marked out by the points of connection between religious anthropology, ethno-medicine and medical anthropology, focusing on topics such as magical and religious concepts of health and disease, causes of disease, religious and magical averting and healing rites, healing gods, saints and, last but not least, the role that these play in the society, religion, mentality and everyday life of a community, as well as their various representations in folklore, literature or art. This volume includes, without restrictions of a methodological, temporal or geographical nature, works from the fields of folklore studies, anthropology, cultural history, comparative historical and textual philology, as well as research findings using the latest methods of analysis in textual folklore or based on archival research or fieldwork in or outside of Europe. This book will appeal to researchers and students of religion, folklore, and medical anthropology, as well as general readers interested in the humanities and cultural history.

The Anatomies of God, the Bible, and Religion

The Anatomies of God, the Bible, and Religion PDF Author: Donald R. Nuss
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1450250149
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 600

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Book Description
No one knows exactly what happened two thousand years ago in the Holy Land. The four Gospel authors proclaimed their versions, and the fathers of the emerging Christian church trumpeted them to be the Gospel Truth. In The Anatomies of God, the Bible, and Religion, author Donald R. Nuss examines evidence that contravenes what has been accepted for centuries. It asks questions that ministers and priests cannot or will not answer, such as: Is the Bible historically accurate, the word of God, or an amalgam of half truths, myths, and fiction? The result of fifty years of research, The Anatomies of God, the Bible, and Religion serves as a Biblical handbook. Insightful commentary explains how each author of the Old Testament influenced the conduct of the ancient Israelis and how some provided source material for New Testament Gospel authors. Nuss explores the Bibles mystique, reveals its beauty, exposes its blemishes, and analyzes, praises, and criticizes its inconsistencies, contradictions, and mendacity. In this thorough examination, Nuss seeks to explain why religion inspires, elevates, and gives encouragement to many, but incites, irritates, and inflames others.

West Africa's Women of God

West Africa's Women of God PDF Author: Robert M. Baum
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253017912
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
West Africa's Women of God examines the history of direct revelation from Emitai, the Supreme Being, which has been central to the Diola religion from before European colonization to the present day. Robert M. Baum charts the evolution of this movement from its origins as an exclusively male tradition to one that is largely female. He traces the response of Diola to the distinct challenges presented by conquest, colonial rule, and the post-colonial era. Looking specifically at the work of the most famous Diola woman prophet, Alinesitoué, Baum addresses the history of prophecy in West Africa and its impact on colonialism, the development of local religious traditions, and the role of women in religious communities.