Rent Wild Mind: A Field Guide to the Human Psyche

Synopsis

Bill Plotkin describes himself as a "psychologist gone wild." As a cultural visionary, author, and wilderness guide, he's been breaking trail for decades. Plotkin's revisioning of psychology invites us into a conscious and embodied relationship with the more-than-human world. In Wild Mind, Plotkin uses the template of the four directions - north, south, east, west - to describe the four facets of the Self (our innate human wholeness) and also four sets of fragmented or wounded subpersonalities to which we're all prone. The north facet of the Self, for example, is our nurturing generative adult, while wounded north can take the form of an inner critic or of enacting codependent roles. Rather than proposing to eliminate subpersonalities (which is not possible), Wild Mind shows readers how to cultivate wholeness, heal woundedness (using the resources of the Self), and discover the gifts of the subpersonalities. Plotkin also reveals how cultivating the fourfold Self provides essential resources for the encounter with soul, a necessary threshold crossing for all visionary artisans of cultural renaissance. Wild Mind offers a map to becoming fully human and breaks trail toward a new Western psychology rooted in the rhythms of the Earth in which we're embedded.

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