Main description:

Within this book, Gray argues that moments of profound existential importance are given to us in the presence of art, and that such moments are important motivators in our personal, civic and moral lives.

Using the work of Jung, Freud, Berger and Nussbaum, this book looks to art in its theory and practice as a driver of psychic epiphany. Examining music, environment, architecture, poetry, and paining, it traces the relationship between the ordinary and the extraordinary, showing how we can and do locate ourselves beyond our own psyches in a world of artistic endeavour. Gray concludes that art plays a critical role in psychological practice and human flourishing on an individual and collective level.

Epiphany, Individuation and Human Flourishing will appeal to artists, art theorists, therapists and analysts as a teaching tool that demonstrates the possible connections that can be made among the arts, sciences and psycho-therapeutic communities, and Nature.

Contents:

Livining Bodies and Consciousness: Foundations Introduction 1. Existential Experience and Epiphany 2. Change: Nature, Beauty, Art 3. Touch, Beauty, Place 4. Art and its Functions: Some comments about Freud and Jung 5. Nature, Beauty, Art: foundations of an ethical life 6. Appendix: Personal Experience