Maps of Meaning

The Architecture of Belief

Author: Jordan B. Peterson

Connecting neuropsychology and cognitive science with Freudian theory and Jungian approaches to mythology and narrative, this text aims to show that there is an empirical connection between what neuroscience tells us about the brain/behaviour, and what rituals and myths have long narrated.

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Summary

Description

This text connects two worlds that do not often meet - that of neuropsychology and cognitive science with Freudian theory and Jungian approaches to mythology and narrative. Peterson shows the reader that there is an empirical connection between what technologically sophisticated neuroscience tells us about the brain and behaviour, and what ritual, myths, and religious stories have long narrated. This connection has applications that play a key role in understanding human emotions and motivations for social conflict.

Critic Reviews

"The book reflects its author's profound moral sense and vast erudition in areas ranging from clinical psychology to scripture and a good deal of personal soul-searching and experience...with patients who include prisoners, alcoholics and the mentally ill." -- Montreal Gazette
"This is not a book to be abstracted and summarized. Rather it should be read at leisure...and employed as a stimulus and reference to expand one's own maps of meaning. I plan to return to Peterson's musings and mapping many times over the next few years." -- Am JPsychiatry
"...a brilliant enlargement of our understanding of human motivation...a beautiful work." -- Sheldon H. White, Harvard University
"...unique...a brilliant new synthesis of the meaning of mythologies and our human need to relate in story form the deep structure of our experiences." -- Keith Oatley, University of Toronto

About the Author

Jordan B. Peterson is a clinical psychologist and Professor at the University of Toronto and was formerly at Harvard University. He has published numerous articles on drug abuse, alcoholism and aggression.

Back Cover

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 structure of the world itself? Jordan Peterson offers 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. A cutting-edge work that brings together neuropsychology, cognitive science, and Freudian and Jungian approaches to mythology and narrative, Maps of Meaning presents a rich theory that makes the wisdom and meaning of myth accessible to the critical modern mind.