Maps of Meaning

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.

"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

• Preface: Descensus ad Inferos1. Maps of Experience: Object and Meaning2. Maps of Meaning: Three Levels of AnalysisNormal and RevolutionaryLife: Two Prosaic StoriesNeuropsychological Function:The Nature of the MindMythological Representation:TheConstitutent Elements of Experience3. Apprenticeship and Enculturation: Adoption of a Shared Map4. The Appearance of Anomaly: Challenge to the Shared MapIntroduction: The Paradigmatic Structure ofthe KnownParticular Forms of AnomalyThe Rise ofSelf-Reference, and the Permanent Contamination ofAnomaly with Death5. The Hostile Brothers: Archetypes of Response to the UnknownIntroduction:The Hero and the AdversaryThe Adversary: Emergence,Development and RepresentationHeroic Adaptation:Voluntary Reconstruction of the Map ofMeaningConclusion: The Divinity of Interest