Erich Neumann: Depth Psychology and a New Ethic.
Erich Neumann (1905-1960) was born in Berlin. He received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in 1927 and then continued to study medicine at the University of Berlin....
Tagged: People
Michel Foucault
Foucault (1926 – 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, social theorist, and literary critic. He theorized the relationship between power and knowledge, and examined the forms of social control...
Lacan’s Life
The following chronology of Lacan’s life and work is based on a list of dates, publications, and events, assembled by the authors of Lacan.com. There is also an excellent overview of his...
Cicero: A Remarkable Life (106 – 43 BC)
The following description of Cicero’s life is mainly quoted from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. There is also a short description of his life in the context of ancient political...
Friedrich Schelling: System of Transcendental Philosophy. 1800
About Schelling “Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775–1854) is, along with Fichte and Hegel, one of the three most influential thinkers in the tradition of ‘German Idealism’. Since he changed...
Martin Heidegger (1889–1976)
Martin Heidegger was an important German philosopher in the 20th century, who is famous for his theories on existentialism and phenomenology. He was associated with existentialism, despite his efforts to...
Rosenhan: On Being Sane In Insane Places
How do we know what constitutes “normality” or mental illness? Conventional wisdom suggests that specially trained professionals have the ability to make reasonably accurate diagnoses. In the research described below,...
Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995)
Emmanuel Levinas is one of the most interesting European thinkers in the 20th Century. He is Jewish and grew up in Russia, studies philosophy with Husserl and Heidegger in Freiburg,...
Descartes: Selections from Meditations. 1641
Descartes’ Life René Descartes (1596 – 1650) was born near Tours, in France, and was educated for nine years at a Jesuit college. After graduating with a law degree from...
Kurt Koffka: Principles of Gestalt Psychology. (1935)
Koffka wrote this book in 1935; I am reproducing the first chapter here. Why Psychology? AN INTRODUCTORY QUESTION When I first conceived the plan of writing this book I guessed,...
Wolfgang Metzger: Can the subject create his world? (1974)
In talking to younger psychologists, one finds that many of them seem to believe that perception is something at the surface of the mind, a kind of borderline problem, and that preoccupation with it is obsolete. They look with disdain at every psychological problem that does not at least deal with personality, motivation, or social intercourse. But when discussing problems in which simple facts of stimulus and reaction play a role, as for example in behavior therapy, they prove that they would have done well to occupy themselves a little more with the fundamentals of perception.
Max Wertheimer: What is Gestalt Theory? (1924)
Wertheimer tried to answer this question in a lecture given before the Kant Society in Berlin, on December 7, 1924. It was first published in German in 1925: “Über Gestalttheorie.” The translation is...
Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961)
Carl Jung was a Swiss psychoanalyst who created a version of psychoanalysis that is still very popular today. His system blends to some degree with New Age thinking and resonates with a popular cultural trend that is fascinated by mythology, dreams, storytelling, and archetypes.
Josef Koudelka: Photos from the Underside of Europe
Josef Koudelka, a Czech photographer, was born in Moravia, Czechoslovakia, in 1938. He began to take photographs as a student in the 1950s. He started a career as an aeronautical...
Erik Erikson
The following summary is based on: McLeod, S. A. (2008). Erik Erikson. Retrieved from http://www.simplypsychology.org/Erik-Erikson.html Introduction Erikson’s ideas were greatly influenced by Freud, going along with Freud’s ideas about the structure...
Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph (1809-1865)
Proudhon was from humble origins but had become a well-known French social theorist during the 1840s. A printer by trade, he was an exponent of socialism, with a political preference...
