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.
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... a sweeping theory of narrative, belief, meaning and religion... the book's bibliography ranges through existentialist philosophers and literary critics, as well as Dante, Dostoevsky, Goethe, Stephen Hawking, C.G. Jung, Lao Tzu, Konrad Lorenz, brain scientist A.R. Luria, Milton, Nietzsche, Piaget, Solzhenitsyn, Voltaire and Wittgenstein... a grand, sprawling, ambitious undertaking, an intellectual adventure that aims to synthesize disparate knowledge in the classic, old-fashioned tradition of social science. -- Craig Lambert, Harvard Magazine, September-October 1998
From the Back Cover
Jordan Peterson's book is a brilliant enlargement of our understanding of human motivation. He follows a path that has been recommended by many scientist-scholars in the past - but one that is, in practice, so extraordinarily demanding that it is hardly ever done well. Peterson synthesizes research and scholarly literatures ranging from neuroscience to archaeology. He aligns the finds of those literatures with the writings of such authors as Jung, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, and Solzhenitsyn. There is loving detail in this book - reflection, thoughtfulness, careful study, a passionate desire to understand. This is a beautiful work. (Sheldon H. White, Chair, Department of Psychology, Harvard University).
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Amazon.com:
4.9 out of 5 stars
8 reviews
26 of 28 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating read
19 Mar 2001
By Joseph Deal
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
I am also a former student of Professor Peterson's, taught on the manuscript of this book, and it made such an impression on me that here I am, tracking it down three years later to reread. There are many significant positives to this book, as you can guess from the other reviews here. My main complaint is that the 400-odd pages could be vastly condensed and more tightly organized without weakening the thesis. When the subject matter is this dense, there is some argument for restating important points, but I do think the author sometimes errs on the side of excessive restatement.
Another area where the book could have been improved is in the use of more anthropological data to support its various hypotheses. An interesting follow-up read to Maps of Meaning is Wandering God by Morris Berman, which spends more effort tying the factual aspects of human and societal evolution to the way modern-day society is organized and the way people relate to the world around them. He also has some very strong opinions about comparative mythology a la Jung and Campbell.
Overall, Maps of Meaning is highly original, thought-provoking, and very well worth reading. Expect it to make a permanent mark on the way you see the world.
19 of 20 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Challenging and prolific.
29 Jun 1999
By A Customer
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
In these days where the academic reinforcement schedule is such that reward comes from knowing more and more about less and less, it is wonderful to see someone tackle the big problems in a grand theory - and Jordan Peterson does address some big problems. He aims his analytical lens at the motivational and behavioral dynamics behind evil and meaning. These issues seem to be most often addressed by theogians whose presuppositions are difficult for a rational person to digest whole, or by New Age fuzzy thinkers. This book is most definitely not New Age (Joe Campbellites beware - meaning is not simple bliss!) in its hard look at what mythic narrative, as a phenomenon devoted to motivation and behavior, is about and what it can tell us today.
I found the book taught me lessons in the neuropsychology of emotion, moral philosophy, and the deep structure of mythic narrative - and weaved these disparate fields into a coherent, powerful tool of interpretation (which is what a good theory should be). Undoubtedly there are weaknesses in Jordan's understanding of each of these individual fields, but his synthesis is pretty interesting, at worst, and profound, at best. This is a challenging read, both in the scope and difficulty of the material and in the way your thinking about your self and the world is challenged. For those with a good attention span and a synthetic curiosity about the world, I would recommend this book highly.
31 of 35 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
If you are only going to read 1 book in your life...
10 Mar 2002
By Steven E. Romer
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
this is THE book to read! This puts into perspective any of the other books you might read, including religious books like the Bible! This book unlocks the symbolism used in profound writings of history. Talks about the deep symbolism of the deepest human aspirations--unlocks what has been hidden under these murky symbols. Jordan shows us the true nature of the heroic impulses for the individual and for mankind in general, and the failure and fear of the heroic that causes both individual and social atrocities. I cannot say enough about his genius for elucidating these things--gives me new hope for the world. I accidentally met the man at a conference on consciousness, and it was like I met a long lost brother--before I read his book! This is because he has tapped into a great ocean of truth underlying our most cherished symbols. If you are a truth-seeker--whether in science or about yourself and your soul--this is the book you have been looking for. These ideas are a large part of the keys to eliminating the most greivous ills of humanity. One of my top 10 books of all time, if not #1.
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4.9 out of 5 stars
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