Maps of Meaning

"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

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.

Preface: Descensus ad Inferos 1. Maps of Experience: Object and Meaning 2. Maps of Meaning: Three Levels of Analysis Normal and RevolutionaryLife: Two Prosaic Stories Neuropsychological Function:The Nature of the Mind Mythological Representation:TheConstitutent Elements of Experience 3. Apprenticeship and Enculturation: Adoption of a Shared Map 4. The Appearance of Anomaly: Challenge to the Shared Map Introduction: The Paradigmatic Structure ofthe Known Particular Forms of Anomaly The Rise ofSelf-Reference, and the Permanent Contamination ofAnomaly with Death 5. The Hostile Brothers: Archetypes of Response to the Unknown Introduction:The Hero and the Adversary The Adversary: Emergence,Development and Representation Heroic Adaptation:Voluntary Reconstruction of the Map ofMeaning Conclusion: The Divinity of Interest