Self-help

Psychological Healing Through Creative Self-Understanding and Self-Transformation

(ISBN: 978-1-62857-075-5)

Are you ready for psychological healing? This book is your liberating guide to psychological growth, including self-understanding, self-transformation, healing psychologically painful inner conflicts, as well as achieving psychological and spiritual fulfillment. Some aspects of psychological health and fulfillment clarified in this book include, authenticity, sincerity, integrity, creativity, intuition, empathy, inspiration, vitality, courage, strength of character, unselfish love (or warmhearted caring), emotional security, inner wholeness, and fulfillment.

Readers will discover a new understanding of effective psychotherapy, groundbreaking diagnostic psychological testing research, as well as the distinction between the ego self-concept, the experiential self, and the transpersonal self (the real self, the relational self, or the holistic self).

The authors deeply explored their own psychological pain and experiential truth to write this book, as a way of helping readers achieve greater self-understanding, fulfillment, and liberation from psychological pain. These principles of psychological self-understanding and healing self-transformation can also enhance the development of interpersonal relationships, as well as facilitate effective and fulfilling ways of living in society. Self-transformation at your fingertips!


About the Authors

The primary author, Dr. Max Hammer, was a distinguished Psychology Professor and supervisor of graduate students and interns in the clinical psychology, psychotherapy, and counseling practice training program of the Psychology Department at the University of Maine, for many years, as well as a respected psychotherapist and clinical psychology consultant and diagnostician. Dr. Max Hammer was one of the original core clinicians who founded and developed the Clinical Psychology program at the University of Maine, beginning in the 1960′s. In his work with graduate and undergraduate students in that program, Dr. Max Hammer provided a refreshing Humanistic and Transpersonal perspective, with an emphasis on flexible, warmly caring, empathic responsiveness to the needs of the individual psychotherapy client. A secondary contributing author is Dr. Alan C. Butler, a distinguished colleague and friend of Dr. Max Hammer’s. Dr. Butler, a Cooperating Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Maine, as well as a psychotherapist, clinical psychology consultant, and diagnostician, was one of the original staff members at the University of Maine counseling center, and served as the Training Director for its internship program for over thirty years, which he was instrumental in developing. Both Dr. Max Hammer and Dr. Alan C. Butler helped gently nurture and encourage thousands of graduate and undergraduate psychology students in their own individual journeys of personal reflection and transformation. The other secondary contributing author, Dr. Barry J. Hammer, also from Maine, has a specialization in the history of world religions, and for many years has studied the process of psychological and spiritual transformation, and its applicability to enhancing human relationships and compassionate social change.

The primary author, the late Dr. Max Hammer, was an editor and a major contributor of two previously published books, The theory and Practice of Psychotherapy with Specific Disorders (Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas Publisher, 1972); and The Practice of Psychotherapy with Children (Homewood, Illinois: Dorsey Press, 1967). He also published about 30 articles in the fields of psychotherapy and clinical psychology.

The primary author, Dr. Max Hammer, is deceased, therefore, this website will be managed by his eldest son and secondary contributing author Dr. Barry J. Hammer. Another secondary contributing author is Dr. Alan C. Butler.

Giving circles are growing in number in the U.S., U.K., and elsewhere. They involve individuals pooling resources and deciding together where and how to give these away. They also include social, educational, and volunteer opportunities for members. Most work on giving circles to date has focused on the contributions they make to nonprofit organizations as a means to address community problems. This paper focuses on the dual purposes of giving circles to 1) serve members as self-help/mutual aid groups for wealthy and other philanthropists and 2) provide resources to the community. Based on data gathered through interviews, document analysis and secondary data, the paper asserts that giving circles provide their greatest value as self-help/mutual aid sources for members rather than as mechanisms for addressing community problems and this has important implications for the expectations of voluntary institutions in a new governance/risk environment.

The following is published on the www.takingtheescalator.com website but is also being made available on Academia.edu for review. It is designed for groups as an in-depth look at self esteem from a realistic perspective, with substance use issues in mind.

The vast majority of people in this world have heard about the idea of "hitting bottom" when it comes to addiction and making positve changes,  which can be a reality, but often can be a fallacy. "Topping Out" may be a more crucial consideration for young people who find themselves caught up in a lifestyle of drug and alcohol use, abuse and misuse

The cognitive mental functions give humans a particular advantage in terms of creative solution development. Humans are constantly engaging in a process of internal dialogue across a variety of subject areas. Mental distress may be at least partly remedied by verbalizing, understanding, and perhaps modifying the internal dialogue. In persons suffering from chronic dependency as well as anxiety and depression the described technique may be useful.

Sharing a holistic communication approach developed from years of research, teaching and professional experience, Midnight Musings: Explorations in Public Speaking is your public speaking playbook. You will discover how to understand your audience, overcome communication apprehension, create memorable presentations, and  develop a will to plan and practice that will enhance your value as a communicator -- forever.

With Midnight Musings: Explorations in Public Speaking you will learn to:
·  Overcome stage fright and anxiety
·  Merge the basics of rhetoric with the principles of design thinking
·  Maximize the power of persuasion with storytelling
·  Motivate, inform and inspire your audience
·  Recognize and confront gaslighting
·  Craft and receive constructive critique
·  Communicate online and in diverse contexts
·  Leverage emerging technology and prepare for the future of public speaking



Keywords: Public Speaking; Communication; Design Thinking; Persuasion; Leadership; Career Development Counseling; Success Self-Help; Education

Directory paths: Communication Studies; Public Speaking

The present article argues that despite growing rates of single living worldwide, alternative representations of the single women who do not necessarily spend their life 'waiting for the one' are regularly absent from public view. By exploring the injunction as well as the option of non-waiting, this paper contributes to time studies by stressing how understandings of waiting inform hegemonic and alternative forms of temporal subjectivity and sociality. In the first part of this paper, I explore the ways in which the injunction to stop waiting is articulated in het-eronormative imagery. This call is regularly expressed with temporal urgency, and from this vantage point waiting comes to represent passivity and immobility. Accordingly, women are expected to 'move on' and be active in their own self-governance, which adapts to conventional norms of femininity. In the second part of this article, I demonstrate how the option of non-waiting dismantles and reworks heteronormative life scripts, and offers new subject positions for single women. These reflections propose alternative timetables that allow single women to reclaim their temporal agency and redefine their own temporal rhythms and life trajectories.

The essay proposes to reconstruct the history of the International Movement of Voices’ Hearers. People who hear voices in their head, without anyone speaking, are commonly labelled as schizophrenic. The Hearing Voices Movement strongly contrasts this definition of otherness as pathology and offers a different way of thinking about voices and living with them. The essay describes the history of the movement, starting by its origins in the Netherlands: the experience of Patsy Hage, a 30 years old patient, was the beginning of the International Movement of Voices’ Hearers, a network of self-help groups spread all around the world. The authors analyse the counter-discourse proper of the Hearing Voices Movement, by identifying four dialectical moves: the focalisation only in the voices experience; the restitution of the experience of voice to the normality; the meaning making of this experience; the valorisation of this special otherness. The essay closes with a map of the voices hearers groups in Italy.

The following contribution tackles autonomía by reflecting on the relationship between culture and space and, therefore, on the multiple actors involved in an urban project. This interaction and involvement are envisioned through the approach termed as 'cultural co-design'. The work is divided into four main sections. First, the mega-minga, an initiative based on the collaboration between citizens and institutions to produce collective urban spaces in Ecuador, is introduced. This is followed by a critical analysis of the mega-minga itself through the specific case of the Comuna de Santa Clara de San Millán, located in Quito. The deficiencies and the potentials of this collaborative practice will be illustrated by contextualizing the mega-minga historically, and relating it back to an evolving customary practice based on reciprocity. The third section of the paper looks at the intrinsic characteristics of the minga practice, explores its decolonizing qualities and the opportunity it represents to reorient mainstream client-based and for-profit urban design practices in Ecuador. The article concludes by turning once again to the case of Santa Clara de San Millán. It envisions a scenario where autonomía is attainable through alternatives supporting a more equitable 'interaction' between space, culture, citizens, and institutions.

In the wake of the recent trends towards an increasing bussinessification of the university, the humanities have had a particularly difficult time proving their worth. When the university increasingly evaluates the worth of particular departments and programs through cost-benefit analysis, or with regards to "real life job skills"-a notion often defined by commercial abilities-the infamously "impractical" but eminently valuable disciplines of literature, history, and philosophy departments struggle to survive. It is difficult to prove a direct link between, for example, excelling as a lawyer and proficiency in a challenging class on Plato. Simply put, humanities do not communicate well in the language that increasingly dominates discussions about academia. (And this should not be surprising considering Allen Bloom's diagnosis of this issue decades ago in his 1986 best-seller The Closing of the American Mind.)

[AMAZON LINK BELOW TO BOOK ITSELF -- TOC and book intro in downloadable .pdf] 

"It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it." --John Steinbeck Scientific research confirms what people have always known: answers, ideas, and inspiration do come to us in dreams. Harvard psychologist and world-renowned dream specialist Deirdre Barrett, Ph.D., offers this rich collection of examples of how the world's most creative practitioners in art, music, film, science, literature and other fields have used the revelations of their dream life to inform their work. Dr. Barrett offers insights showing us how to encourage lucid, meaningful dreaming, and how to apply the meanings of our dreams to solving problems--from the everyday to the extraordinary. This is the stuff dreams are made of. In the visual arts, Jasper Johns couldn't find his unique artistic vision until he dreamed it in the form of a large American flag. Salvador Dali and his colleagues built the startling new genre of surrealism out of dreams. Kubla Kahn dreamed the design for his stately pleasure dome; thousands of years later, Lucy Davis, chief architect at a major firm, continues the tradition of dreaming designs into life in her extraordinary buildings. Film is a fertile avenue for dreams: "Twice I have transferred dreams to film exactly as I had dreamed them," confides director Ingmar Bergman, as have Federico Fellini, Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, Robert Altman, and John Sayles. From Mary Shelley's terrible nightmare, which became Frankenstein, to Stephen King's haunting dream as a little boy, which led to his first bestseller, countless writers have consulted the Committee. Musicians from Beethoven to Billy Joel and Paul McCartney have whistled the Committee's tunes. In science, physiologist Otto Loewi dreamed the medical experiment that earned him the Nobel Prize. In sports, Marion Jones dreamed she'd broken a world record, then brought the dream to life. Gandhi translated his dream of resistance into a movement that changed the world. Since Freud, we take it for granted that our dreams reflect our past. In The Committee of Sleep, Barrett reveals how dreams can also tell us about our future potential--and how to reach it.

The introductory section of an essay is essential since it determines whether the reader will be interested in continuing to read the text or not. For this reason, the use of essay hooks is necessary to perform the task of leading and grabbing the attention of the reader regarding the subject of a particular essay. There are several types of hooks that one could consider making their work interesting to read. Thus, this paper seeks to carry out an exploration of the different types of essay hooks and provide the relevant examples for each.

he was a selfhelp writer for health magazines who had no idea what he was talking about. But now, after years of experience, he finally feels qualified to guide people on the journey of life-call this book punishment for his sins, and a huge reward for you! In The Plus, Greg teaches you how to brainwash yourself into better behavior, retaining the pluses in your life and eliminating the minuses. His approach to self-help is simple, and perfect for cynics; it's not about positive thinking in the short term, it's about positive being in the long term. With tough love and more than a little political incorrectness, he delivers sage wisdom such as:

The Challenge

We must improve our understanding of 'evil', because our lack of understanding gives evil vastly more power over us and the way we live, than it would if we knew more about what we were dealing with and how to deal with it. We need to know how to recognize it, realize when it's right next to us, when it's coming, when it's gathering strength, when it's sneaking something by, deceiving us, when it's building something in secret, when it's waning, when it's pretending to be something other than what it is, and a bit about what to expect from it in general.

Maybe it will be clearer if we talk about cruelty, malice, abuse, brutality, hatred, hostility, violence, madness, tyranny, domination, authoritarianism, enslavement, war, theft, murder, assassination, torture, betrayal, deception, destruction and so on, instead of talking about 'evil' which too easily lends itself to abstract moralizing about some literal outer 'devil'.  But these terms don't do the trick.  Together they make 'evil' sound commonplace and 'normal', and of course in many ways it is. 

Yet our problem remains, that a few people are in a class by themselves. They exhibit a degree of murderous animosity that staggers the imagination, throttles our sensibilities, and surpasses the typical person's ability to believe and accept that a human being could possibly behave so despicably toward others or toward life and nature itself. Then, since too many people fail to recognize these 'monsters' masquerading as human beings, and often as 'leaders' no less—we follow them! We revere and follow grossly unbalanced madmen! It's our own responsibility as sane human beings to stop respecting them, obeying them and following them. It is not their responsibility to stop preying upon our ignorance, stupidity and passivity. Their claims that we're mindless, spineless and stupid, form their self-proclaimed justifications for preying upon us as they do in the first place!

Người điều phối của FPT Polytechnic: Nguyễn Nghiệm Ngày ban hành: Bài Assignment này đòi hỏi sinh viên phải dùng khoảng 45h làm để hoàn thành Tương ứng với mục tiêu môn học:-Biết cách thiết kế mô hình dữ liệu ERD dựa vào mô tả nghiệp vụ-Từ mô hình ERD thiết kế cơ sở dữ liệu mức vật lý-Tạo các ràng buộc dữ liệu trên bảng-Tạo cơ sở dữ liệu trên các hệ quản trị cơ sở dữ liệu cơ bản như Access, My SQL, SQL Server…-Tạo các đối tượng trong cơ sở dữ liệu bằng ngôn ngữ T-SQL-Thực hiện các câu lệnh truy vấn trên 1 bảng và nhiều bảng-Thực hiện các câu lệnh thao tác dữ liệu insert, update, delete vào các bảng Gian lận là hình thức lấy bài làm của người khác và sử dụng như là mình làm ra. Hình thức đó bao gồm những hành động như: copy thông tin trực tiếp từ trang web hay sách mà không ghi rõ nguồn tham khảo trong tài liệu; gửi bài assignment làm chung như là thành quả cá nhân; copy bài assignment của các sinh viên khác cùng khóa hay khác khóa; ăn trộm hay mua bài assignment của ai đó và gửi lên như là sản phẩm mình làm ra. Những sinh viên bị nghi ngờ gian lận sẽ bị điều tra và nếu phát hiện là có gian lận thì sẽ phải chịu các mức phạt theo quy định của Nhà trường. Mọi tài nguyên copy hay điều chế từ bất cứ nguồn nào (VD: Internet, sách) phải được đặt trong cặp dấu nháy kép và in nghiêng, với thông tin tham khảo đầy đủ về nguồn tài liệu. Bài làm của bạn sẽ được đưa vào phần mềm kiểm tra gian lận. Mọi hình thức cố tình đánh lừa hệ thống phát hiện gian lận sẽ bị coi là Vi phạm quy định trong thi cử. Quy định nộp bài Assignment:  Một bản mềm kết quả bài làm assignment của bạn phải được upload trước nửa đêm (giờ địa phương) vào ngày hạn nộp. Quá hạn nộp hệ thống sẽ khóa lại và sinh viên không còn quyền nộp bài.  Phiên bản upload lên cuối cùng sẽ được chấm điểm. Sinh viên có quyền upload đè file nhiều lần trước khi hết hạn nộp.

The contemporary world is facing a problem in emulation. People poorly choose someone not because of what the person has offered to the world positively, but because they admire the appearance thereby letting go the reality. It is the aim of this paper to look into the question of role, thereby portraying its relevance in our contemporary society.

This book helps readers to: (1) analyze their behavior based on a comprehensive understanding of why they do the things they do, (2) change their behavior if they want to, and (3) better understand why others behave as they do.  The approach goes beyond the outdated thinking that dominates psychology today.

Das Ideal individueller Authentizität von Personen ist ein ebenso verbreitetes wie umstrittenes Ideal in modernen, liberalen Gesellschaften. Wertgeschätzt wird in Bezug auf die Authentizität von Personen die Idee einer authentischen Selbst-Entsprechung: etwas oder jemand gilt als authentisch durch Selbstübereinstimmung, dadurch ‚wirklich so zu sein', ohne Verstellung, ohne Beeinflussung von auβen. Es geht darum, sich selbst treu zu sein und zu bleiben. Verteidigt wird das Ideal der Authentizität im Sinne einer Selbst-Verteidigung gegen Erfahrungen der Entfremdung und als ein verantwortliches Selbstverhältnis im Prozess einer fortgesetzten Authentifizierung gegenüber sich selbst und anderen.

Transform your life with tiny changes in behaviour-starting now. People think when you want to change your life, you need to think big. But world-renowned habits expert James Clear has discovered another way. He knows that real change comes from the compound effect of hundreds of small decisions-doing two push-ups a day, waking up five minutes early, or holding a single short phone call. He calls them atomic habits. In this groundbreaking book, Clears reveals exactly how these minuscule changes can grow into such life-altering outcomes. He uncovers a handful of simple life hacks (the forgotten art of Habit Stacking, the unexpected power of the Two Minute Rule, or the trick to entering the Goldilocks Zone), and delves into cutting-edge psychology and neuroscience to explain why they matter. Along the way, he tells inspiring stories of Olympic gold medalists, leading CEOs, and distinguished scientists who have used the science of tiny habits to stay productive, motivated, and happy.

“Bilgi bombardımanına uğradığımız bu çağda 7’den 70’e herkesin en büyük ve ortak problemlerinden biri odaklanma eksikliği ve buna bağlı olarak öğrenme güçlüğü çekiyor olmamız. Birçok işle aynı anda ilgilenmemize rağmen hiçbir şeyi layıkıyla yapamadığımızdan yakınıyor ve hep bir şeyleri kaçırıyor endişesi yaşıyoruz. Ne dinlediğimiz aklımızda kalıyor, ne de okuduğumuzu anlayabiliyoruz. Eğitim sistemimiz ise; her geçen gün daha da ezber gerektiren soruları ile çocuklarımızı bunaltır hale geldi. Yaratıcılığımız her seviyede sınırlanmakta, gelişen teknoloji ile birlikte etrafımızda odaklanmaya engel olan uyarıcıların miktarı günden güne hızla artmaktadır. Bu uyarıcıların artışını görmezden gelerek, çocuklarımıza hemen dikkat eksikliği ve hiperaktivite teşhisi koyma eğilimine girdik. (…) Oysa çocuklarla zihin haritalama, hızlı okuma, hafıza teknikleri ve tarih gezileri gibi programlar yaptığımda, ‘çok yaramaz’ diye nam salmış olanlar dahil, tam odaklanma halinde, pürdikkat etkinliklere katıldıklarını gözlemliyorum. Ne telefona ne de tablete bakma ihtiyacı duyuyorlar. Yüz civarı katılımlı söyleşilerimizde öğretmenlerimizin bile en çok şaşırdığı husus; ‘nasıl oluyor da tüm çocuklar dikkatleri dağılmadan salonda durabiliyorlar, etkinliklere katılıyorlar!’ oluyor. Burada bir terslik yok mu sizce de? Aslında yanıt basit. Çocukların hatta yetişkinlerin ilgisini çekmeyi başaramazsak odaklanma sorunlarının ortaya çıkması son derece doğaldır.” İşte Necdet Bükülmez’in Beynim Öğrenmeyi Öğreniyor adlı eseri, çağımızın önemli sorunlarından biri olan odaklanma ve öğrenme meselesine eğiliyor, buradan hareketle okuyucuların farkındalığını arttırmayı amaçlıyor. Bizzat kendi deneyimleri ve verdiği eğitimlerden hareketle, kitapta da yer verdiği “Beyin Haritalama Tekniklerinin” ve uygulamaların altını ısrarla çizen Bükülmez eserini “Dünyanın bütün yoksul ve yoksun ama hayalleri çok zengin çocuklarına” ithaf ediyor.

Monica Sweeney offers the perfect gift of mindfulness with this beautiful, uplifting guided journal for when you just don't give a f*ck.

The road to serenity is ahead, and it’s paved with a f*ck-ton of profanity. When quiet meditation and peaceful mantras aren’t enough to cut through the bullsh*t and brighten your day―hold close the pages of Zen as F*ck. On each and every page, you can give the good around you a warm f*cking hug and kick the bad on its ass. Journal your way through positive affirmations and cathartic-as-f*ck activities on your liberating journey toward something pretty close to happiness.

Sprinkle, scatter, or set off a glitter-bomb of happy vibes onto your trail of tranquility with Zen as F*ck!

• Start sparkling like the f*cking gem you are
• Learn how to rise, shine, and kick ass
• Cast your soul-shining light on others and spread some f*cking beauty

Don't miss the other f*cking amazing titles in this series: Zen as F*ck at Work, Let That Sh*t Go, and Find Your F*cking Happy

断酒自助会Alcoholics Anonymous は、無数の自助会に「言いっぱなし聞きっぱなし」形式のミーティング方法を提供しただけでなく、「12 のステップ」をはじめとする数多くの文書を残している。それら文書は、彼らの失敗の経験が同時代と将来世代のために役に立つという確信に基づいている。なかでも、『12 のステップと12 の伝統』は、AAが1935 年の創立以来の急成長で直面したさまざまな失敗から学んだことを同時代の仲間や次代の仲間に共有するための書物であり、スピリチュアルケア、グリーフケアの実践や、自助会の運営に関わる者たちにとって有益な経験が記されている。「12 のステップ」は個々のメンバーの
内省を促しつつAAという共同体に向けてひらき、「12 の伝統」は、彼らの回復と生存を支える共同体であるAAをどのように守るかに関心が向けられている。AAは、スピリチュアルケア、グリーフケアの担い手にとって、自らの手痛い失敗を共有してくれる「先行く仲間」なのである。
キーワード： Alcoholics Anonymous、12 のステップと12

Do you find yourself stuck in a rut? Do you ever feel like your life is a never-ending round of hurrying from one place to the next, or from one chore to the next, with little time for relaxation?

That money worries occupy your mind much of the time how to pay those rising bills, or where the next payment for your children's education, your family's healthcare, or your house mortgage occupy your mind or that relationships with your family or spouse suffer because you don't have time to spend with them after all, aren't you working all the hours there are to pay the bills?

No matter how hard you try, things never seem to go right, and frustration and dissatisfaction have become a part of who you are. You yearn for the day when you can take a few moments to yourself and accomplish some of the things you've always wanted to do. You may have unconsciously prepared yourself for unhappiness and failure.

What if there was a way to get rid of fear, wrath, worry, and all the other negative emotions? What if you could change your life such that you could have everything you've ever desired? You have the ability to know.

Manifestation's powerful and secret tactics can help you do just that. And this book will set you on the right path to manifesting your success in 365 days or less by spilling the beans and revealing the secrets used by the rich and famous throughout history.

In a mere quarter century, Mainland China has grown into a hotspot of international self-help. Though the self-help industry has a centuries-long tradition in the Anglo-American realm, this particular, commercial type of life advice is relatively new in Mainland China, first emerging in the wake of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms. Nonetheless, self-help books counseling individuals about the art of life have conquered China’s book market, while US-style ‘self-help gurus’ now play an important role in China’s speaker circuit and mass media. At first, the Chinese mainland simply imported foreign self-help books (translated from English to Mandarin), yet it eventually gave birth to a glocalised and creatively assertive cultural industry. Individual-oriented, US-style self-help now flourishes in the heart of the Middle Kingdom, blatantly defying the dichotomy between ‘Western individualism’ and ‘Eastern collectivism.’

This chapter will first outline the young history of US-style self-help in mainland China and discuss the glocalised character of Chinese self-help culture. Second, it will discuss the structural transformation of the Chinese book market and mass-mediated public sphere which enabled and continues to facilitate the prominence of the self-help industry on the Chinese mainland. Third, it will sketch self-help’s role in public life, which involves touching upon its limited autonomy and weak delineation as a cultural field, its relatively privileged position vis-à-vis institutionalised religion, and its significance as a source of guidance to uprooted individuals chasing after the ‘Chinese Dream’ in the rat race of China’s new market economy.

Adorno’s Minima Moralia was part of a publishing boom in the genre of advice literature in postwar West Germany. The combination of economic resurgence and attempted cultural restoration resulted in a widespread wish to master forming models of social intercourse; this craving for guidance accounts for the volume’s commercial success. But while Adorno participates in the culture of counseling, he couples practical suggestions with repeated announcements of the demise of the self-determining subject, the projected recipient of advice. He addresses problems that appear in the individual’s frame of attention but consistently disputes that this is a meaningful scene of action in the age of total administration. Minima Moralia both inhabits and violates the conventions of advice literature in order to dramatize the experience of the discrepancy between societal logic and the individual’s resources.

In Subjects of Advice, Ivan Lupić uncovers the rich interconnectedness of dramatic art and the culture of counsel in the the early modern period. While counsel was an important form of practical knowledge, with concrete political consequences, it was also an ingrained cultural habit, a feature of obligatory mental, moral, and political hygiene. To be a Renaissance subject, the book claims, one had to reckon with the advice of others. This reckoning is examined in a variety of sixteenth-century dramatic contexts. The result is an original account of the foundational role that counsel played in the development of Renaissance drama.

Subjects of Advice begins by considering the figure of Thomas More, whose influential argument about counsel as a form of performance in Utopia set the agenda for the entire century. Resisting linear narratives and recovering, instead, the simultaneity of radically different kinds of dramatic experience, the book shows the vitality of later dramatic engagements with More’s legacy through an analysis of the moral interlude staged within Sir Thomas More, a play possibly co-authored by Shakespeare. More also helps explain the complex use of counsel in Senecan drama, from the neo-Latin plays of George Buchanan, discussed in connection with Buchanan’s political writings, to the historical tragedies of the mid-sixteenth century.

If tyranny and exemplarity are the keywords for early Elizabethan drama of counsel, for the plays of Christopher Marlowe it is friendship. Lupić considers Marlowe’s interest in friendship and counsel, most notably in Edward II, alongside earlier dramatic treatments, thus exposing the pervasive fantasy of the ideal counselor as another self. Subjects of Advice concludes by placing King Lear in relation to its dramatic sources to demonstrate Shakespeare’s deliberate dispersal of counsel throughout his play. Counsel’s customary link to plain and fearless speech becomes in Shakespeare’s hands a powerful instrument of poetic and dramatic expression.

Readers will learn that we are, quite literally supernatural by nature if given the proper knowledge and instruction, and when we learn how to apply that information through various meditations, we should experience a greater expression of our creative abilities; that we have the capacity to tune in to frequencies beyond our material world and receive more orderly coherent streams of consciousness and energy; that we can intentionally change our brain chemistry to initiate profoundly mystical transcendental experiences; and how, if we do this enough times, we can develop the skill of creating a more efficient, balanced, healthy body, a more unlimited mind, and greater access to the realms of spiritual truth. Topics include:

  • Demystifying the body’s 7 energy centers and how you can balance them to heal
  • How to free yourself from the past by reconditioning your body to a new mind
  • How you can create reality in the generous present moment by changing your energy
  • The difference between third-dimension creation and fifth-dimension creation
  • The secret science of the pineal gland and its role in accessing mystical realms of reality
  • The distinction between Space-Time vs. Time-Space realities

The two most powerful words in the English language, and for that matter in any language, are “Yes” and “No.”  They literally create different realities.  Saying, “Yes,” to a person, event, circumstance, or experience literally points us, and our consciousness, in one direction, and saying “No” to that same person, event, circumstance, or experience literally points us, and our consciousness, in another direction.  Therein lies the power of “Yes” and “No.”  The point of our power, therefore, is in the present—at the point of saying “Yes” and “No”.  Here I want to place emphasis on making that point of power more conscious.