Personal Mythology: The Psychology of Your Evolving Self - Using Ritual, Dreams, and Imagination to Discover Your Inner Story

by David Feinstein, Stanley Krippner, June Singer (Foreword)

Each of us lives a personal mythology, an inner drama whose plot we enact over and over in our daily lives. This guiding mythology determines what we see, how we think and feel, and even what we do. Yet its theme usually lies outside of our awareness and our conscious control.

This practical guide to discovering one’s personal mythology takes the reader on a journey of self-discovery using rituals, dreams, and imagination. Through a series of step-by-step exercises, you are shown how to examine and systematically make changes in the personal myths that underlie your life. The book leads you from uncovering the personal perspective of ancestral roots to cultivating an enlarged relationship with the mysteries of the universe.

While many popular books on “co-dependency” or “addictive relationships” identify destructive personal myths, this work shows you how to transform such underlying patterns into more positive ones. In this way you become less bound by the mythologies of childhood and society and have greater influence over personal patterns that once seemed predetermined.

For more than a decade, Feinstein and Krippner, both psychologists, have taught this system to thousands of people in many parts of the world. Their approach, which originated in a research project in the Department of Psychiatry at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, is presented here to general readers for the first time. No other book provides a more practical system for applying the principles of mythological thought to individual psychology.

Genres: Psychology, Mythology, Spirituality, Nonfiction, Religion, Inspirational, Philosophy

268 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1988

About the author

http://innersource.net/em/about/david...

Reviews

[Tucker Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is what I've been looking for all my life and now I'm going to write my story.

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this up because Stanley Krippner's a friend. But the book's perspective is more labyrinthine than appeals to me. Thus didn't have patience with it and didn't want to finish it. But that's only about me and what I need. Others will enjoy the book, and Stanley's one of the most brilliant researchers and scholars to ever inhabit a body.

[Sinem Eylem · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are into digging your soul deep and understand your own behaviour and how to fix them, this book provides a great framework where you not only gain self-understanding, but internalize that understanding thru practices. If you’re into energy psychology, you will enjoy this book and its practices.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

I used this book in a class a couple of years ago. While I can't recall every word I can say the concepts in the book changed the way I see life and hardly a day goes by I don't think or refer to my personal mythology or that of someone around me.

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Personal Mythology: The Psychology of Your Evolving Self - Using Ritual, Dreams, and Imagination to Discover Your Inner Story (Paperback)
by David Feinstein

[Louis]

I am typically not drawn to self-help books, and this is a self-help book. Yet, there is a good deal of good information in this book and, as self-help books go, it is good. It is one of the few self-help books I would consider suggesting to clients in certain circumstances.

One of the more interesting ideas is concerning the evolution of consciousness. The authors propose that consciousness is getting more influential and more personal (or individual). The external limitations and impositions are becoming more balanced with the power of personal consciousness. It seems the authors would connect this with other ideas of evolution, seeing this as a significant change in the development of what it means to be human.

In the end, a pretty good book.