Melancholics in Love


Book Description

Drawing from a wide spectrum of literary and autobiographical texts from the past and present, such as Jane Austen's Emma and Tina Turner's I, Tina, Frances L. Restuccia moves from a psychoanalytic explanation of the formation of women melancholics to the cultural co-construction of battered women.




The Temperament God Gave You


Book Description

Offers a new interpretation of what a person's individual temperament means for their family and their faith and explains how to identify one's own temperament and use it to fulfill God's plan.




The Four Temperaments


Book Description

Originally published in 1934. "Know yourself." How can we sanctify ourselves, if we do not know ourselves? Self-knowledge is an essential key to mastering the Science of the Saints. Philosophers outline four basic temperaments. Fr. Hock masterfully discusses the four temperaments and the spiritual challenges of each and how to apply the appropriate remedies. This book is written for the average layman and at the end has a test so you can determine what your temperament is and then study the work again to become a saint.




Melancholic Joy


Book Description

Today, we find ourselves surrounded by numerous reasons to despair, from loneliness, suffering and death at an individual level to societal alienation, oppression, sectarian conflict and war. No honest assessment of life can take place without facing up to these facts and it is not surprising that more and more people are beginning to suspect that the human story will end in tragedy. However, this focus on despair does not paint a complete and accurate picture of reality, which is also inflected with beauty and goodness. Working with examples from poetry and literature, including Virginia Woolf and Jack Gilbert and the films of Terrence Malick, Melancholic Joy offers an honest assessment of the human condition. It unflinchingly acknowledges the everyday frustrations and extraordinary horrors that generate despair and argues that the appropriate response is to take up joy again, not in an attempt to ignore or dismiss evil, but rather as part of a “melancholic joy” that accepts the mystery of a world both beautiful and brutal.




A User's Guide to Melancholy


Book Description

A User's Guide to Melancholy takes Robert Burton's encyclopaedic masterpiece The Anatomy of Melancholy (first published in 1621) as a guide to one of the most perplexing, elusive, attractive, and afflicting diseases of the Renaissance. Burton's Anatomy is perhaps the largest, strangest, and most unwieldy self-help book ever written. Engaging with the rich cultural and literary framework of melancholy, this book traces its causes, symptoms, and cures through Burton's writing. Each chapter starts with a case study of melancholy - from the man who was afraid to urinate in case he drowned his town to the girl who purged a live eel - as a way into exploring the many facets of this mental affliction. A User's Guide to Melancholy presents in an accessible and illustrated format the colourful variety of Renaissance melancholy, and contributes to contemporary discussions about wellbeing by revealing the earlier history of mental health conditions.




The Secret Wound


Book Description

This book offers a new reading of early modern romance in the light of historically contemporary accounts of mind, and specifically the medical tradition of love-melancholy. The book argues that the medical profile of the melancholic lover provides an essential context for understanding the characteristic patterns of romance: narrative deferral, epistemological uncertainty, and the endless quest for a quasi-phantasmic beloved. Unlike many recent studies of romance, this book establishes a detailed historical basis for investigating the psychological structure of romance. Wells begins by tracing the development of the medical disorder first known in the Latin west as amor hereos (lovesickness) from its earliest roots in Greek and Arabic medicine to its translation into the Latin medical tradition. Drawing on this detailed historical material, the book considers three important early modern romances: Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata, and Spenser's The Faerie Queene, concluding with a brief consideration of the significance of this literary and medical legacy for Romanticism. Most broadly, the interdisciplinary nature of this study allows the author to investigate the central critical problem of early modern subjectivity in substantially new ways.




Amorous Acts


Book Description

Amorous Acts uses psychoanalytic concepts to show how queer theory is operating to put in place a non-heterosexist social order.




The Anatomy of Grief


Book Description

An original, authoritative guide to the impact of grief on the brain, the heart, and the body of the bereaved Grief happens to everyone. Universal and enveloping, grief cannot be ignored or denied. This original new book by psychologist Dorothy P. Holinger uses humanistic and physiological approaches to describe grief’s impact on the bereaved. Taking examples from literature, music, poetry, paleoarchaeology, personal experience, memoirs, and patient narratives, Holinger describes what happens in the brain, the heart, and the body of the bereaved. Readers will learn what grief is like after a loved one dies: how language and clarity of thought become elusive, why life feels empty, why grief surges and ebbs so persistently, and why the bereaved cry. Resting on a scientific foundation, this literary book shows the bereaved how to move through the grieving process and how understanding grief in deeper, more multidimensional ways can help quell this sorrow and allow life to be lived again with joy. Visit the author's companion website for The Anatomy of Grief: dorothypholinger.com




The Temperament God Gave Your Kids


Book Description

Do you have a child who is into everything? Your energetic, bubbly child is often the center of attention and sometimes in the middle of trouble! Or perhaps you have a child who is just the opposite: quiet, studious, and slow to warm up in social situations. Then there's the future lawyer: that argumentative, willful child who sometimes makes you want to pull your hair out. As parents, we all have, at one time or another, wondered: Where did this child come from? Why isn t he just like me? Am I doing something wrong? You are not doing anything wrong, and there is very likely nothing wrong with your child! The differences described above are all differences in God-given temperament. When you understand your child's unique temperament, you will have the key to unlocking his behavior, moods, and motivational forces. The end result is not only more effective discipline for day-to-day adventures but also a lifelong recognition of how to nurture your child's strengths as a loving and supportive parent, teacher, or grandparent. Become an active, compassionate participant in your child s social and spiritual formation and bring peace, happiness, and holiness to your family in the way God intended. Art and Laraine Bennett provide an accessible synthesis of classical wisdom, modern counseling, science, Catholic spirituality, and wonderful storytelling to the four basic temperaments that serve as the foundation of one's personality and approach to life. This is the authors third book on the topic of temperaments, sharing not only their professional expertise but also their personal life experiences. They have been married for thirty-four years and have four children one each of the four temperament types!




Why You Act the Way You Do


Book Description

Readers discover how temperament affects their work, emotions, spiritual life, and relationships and learn how to make improvements.