Primordial Dance

Paul Downes is Senior Lecturer in Psychology at St Patrick’s College, Dublin City University.

«This is a searching volume that seeks an overview of our conceptions about the nature of mind and of the inherent structure of mental life. It is an astute analysis of ‘subjectivity’ and a scholarly survey of historical approaches to this daunting subject. I found it intriguing reading!» (Jerome Bruner, University Professor Emeritus, New York University)«A fascinating study of unconscious space that quickens sensitive appreciation of the depths of our nature.» (Michael Eigen, PhD, author of ‘Contact with the Depths’ and ‘Feeling Matters’, Associate Clinical Professor of Psychology, New York University)«Paul Downes takes us on a fascinating interdisciplinary journey en route to an explication of the primordial spatial structures that underlie and unconsciously shape all of our experiences. Readers of ‘The Primordial Dance’ will be richly rewarded.» (Robert D. Storolow, Phd, author of ‘World, Affectivity, Trauma: Heidegger and Post-Cartesian Psychoanalysis’, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, UCLA)«This wonderful book [...] is very cleverly designed based on the tension between these two forms of spatial interaction that (the author) says are going on right now [...] in the psyche of each of us today [...]. In chapter 10 he goes back to Heidegger’s ‘Being and Time’ which informed the early chapters and does a very interesting analysis of spatiality, of our being in space according to Heidegger, and shows how one can go far beyond that, that one can do a lot more with it than Heidegger did. I think that is a very important chapter [...]. His model can really make sense of (psychosis) in a brilliant way [...] such a complex dance, such an ingenious book [...]. A fascinating read.» (Professor Graham Parkes, Head of the Department of Philosophy, University College Cork) «‘The Primordial Dance’ offers a profound insight into our unconscious projections and the hidden unconscious axis. It should be required reading for anyone who wishes to deepen their understanding of these unconscious processes.» (Professor Ivor Browne, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, University College Dublin)«‘The Primordial Dance’ is a visionary work [...] which not only presents ideas of different thinkers and both western and eastern philosophical perspectives, but creates audacious bridges between them, giving its own genuine philosophic theory. This vision does not imply restoration of Platonic essentialism, but something different, a more dynamic and inclusive system (if this term can be allowed) that provides room both for primordiality and creative motion not reduced to it. I appreciate its language, which merges philosophic argumentation/description with the poetic. I am fascinated by the scope of its knowledge and visionary insights.» (Levan Gigineishvili, Associate Professor, Philosophy, Ilia State University, Georgia)

• Contents: The Common Blind Spot - Cross-Cultural Projections of Concentric and Diametric Space Underlying: Repression, Attachment, Transitional Objects, Freud’s Eros and Thanathos – The Central Archetype of Jung’s Collective Unconscious – The Phenomenology of Psychosis – Gilligan’s Ethic of Care – Yin/Yang – Modernist Art’s Crisis of Meaning – Heidegger’s Angst, Authenticity and Being-in-the-World – Derrida’s Deconstruction and Cognitive Science.