Re-Visioning Narcissism:
Healing Heresies for Polarized Times
by Gary Rosenthal
Greek poets were writing about narcissism over 2000 years ago. They gave us the myth of Narcissus, from which narcissism was first named. Yet like an under-reported, contagious virus, it continues to spread into all the nooks and crannies of our culture, even its White House. And when American psychiatry's official manual estimates that its prevalence in Americans could be as low as zero percent, it should be evident that narcissism is being narrowly conceived. And hence, badly in need of a "re-visioning." The survival of American democracy—and the fate of our species—may depend on it.
— Gary Rosenthal on Re-Visioning Narcissism: Healing Heresies for Polarized Times
JACK CANFIELD, Author, Chicken Soup for the Soul series
"I love this book! It's really important stuff, a total statement of where we are now - and the underlying cause of what's wrong with everything. Gary Rosenthal is modern-day bard, a poet/wise person all rolled into one, and he's also a psychotherapist. He brings healing and cultural critique, while serving as a custodian of our culture's storehouse of myths. And he provides all these things in his new, nonfiction book, Re-Visioning Narcissism: Healing Heresies for Polarized Times.
“This is a very profound book. Normally I would skim a book before doing an interview when I've heard it's good, as his is, but I couldn't stop turning the pages. What I love about it, too, is that it creates a great deal of awareness about what we're facing in America. It's amazingly elucidating - I just felt wiser and uplifted from knowing what the book shares. So I want to congratulate him on writing in a way that produces that effect."
MARIA ELLEN CHIAIA
5.0 out of 5 stars Subject: A brilliant, ambitious book about healing narcissism and our polarized times.
Reviewed in the United States on July 21, 2021
Subject: A brilliant, ambitious book about healing narcissism and our polarized times
This is a challenging book (because it clearly outlines the polarization we are suffering at this time--while tracing the roots of this polarization, this tribal psychology). And it’s also a marvelous and necessary book (because it offers hints of healing--both for our
collective narcissism, and these polarized times).
Part of what’s distinctive about the book is that it is written from the intersect of 4 avenues of vision: the mythic, psychological, historical / political and the spiritually non-dual. Also notable is how clearly and knowledgeably its author writes about them all. And he tells us, that
without multiple perspectives our view into the terrain of narcissism is limited and we are unable to adequately re-vision it and heal this pervasive, cultural wound.
I highly recommend this book.
Maria Ellen Chiaia Ph.D.
Jungian analyst, Member of C.G. Insititute of San Francisco
Author: Sandplay in Three Voices: Images, Relationship, the Numinous
“I love this book—there’s nothing else quite like it. The mythopoeic perspective it offers reflects the soul in a way that is distinctive from anyone else writing psycho-spiritual books today.”
— Marie Ali, Teacher,
Ridwhan (Diamond Heart) School
“A deftly nuanced, contemporary psychological vision—freshly informed by the wisdom of the non dual traditions … shows us how we ourselves can be freed from the trance-states of our own existence, and into a world of infinite vastness, beauty, and unencumbered intimacy.”
— Peter Fenner, Author of Radiant Mind
SCOTT WEITZ
5.0 out of 5 stars A Profoundly Insightful and Paradigm-Shifting Book!
Reviewed in the United States on July 22, 2021
Verified Purchase
I consider this book one of the best, in fact one of the very few really cutting-edge psychology books that I’ve read in a long time. For the book’s scope overall is such that it’s as much a mythology book, a book about spiritual awakening, a relevant socio-political book, as it is a paradigm-shifting book as it relates to depth psychology. The more you grasp the breakthrough nature of the emerging psychological paradigm that it represents, the more it takes you into a deeper and more insightful level of awareness. Highly recommended!
JEFFREY MARINO
5.0 out of 5 stars A wake-up call for the recovery of our health as a people and species
In this book, Rosenthal addresses the core issue of our culture – and helps us understand how the American values of self-interest and individualism have warped into today’s pervasive lack of empathy and increased brutality.
He traces continuity from the ecstatic denialism of science and facts that accost us daily, and which has dramatically worsened our prospects of survival on this planet, to its roots in the hubris that the ancient Greeks acknowledged as an affront to the gods, on which all life depends.
Revisioning Narcissism is a wake-up call for the self-reflection that is now absolutely necessary - not only for our individual wellbeing, but also for our recovery of health as a people and species.
5.0 out of 5 stars Unique and comprehensive reflection on narcissism and these polarized times
This book is a passionate and ambitious reflection on both the history and the currently limited view of narcissism and its impact on our current challenges as a society. I appreciated that the author assumes a thoughtful reader, and his conviction that the rampant narcissism in and all around us can be healed left me with a modicum of hope.
THE BOOK
Since the early 20th century, when modern psychology was in its infancy, and attempting to establish itself as a legitimate medical and scientific discipline, it largely divorced itself from its close cousins—the world’s religious and spiritual traditions.
The infant discipline had a mantra it was to follow: Where Id is, there shall Ego be. But its egoic-primacy offered little aid either for spiritual awakening, or transforming narcissism (the early psychoanalysts considered the former illusory, the latter untreatable). It failed to see them as two wings of the same inner work.
And the clinical tradition was left with a very partial view of narcissism’s contours— like “blind people describing an elephant.” And a diminished sense of what its complete opposite—and thus, its full healing—even looks like.
And so, for the plethora of books written about narcissism ever since, they haven’t much helped. If anything, our collective narcissism has only increased. And now is oozing out of all the nooks and crannies of a culture—even its White House.
Yet for thousands of years there’ve been spiritual lineages whose perspective—and body of practices—would be helpful adjuncts for modern psychology. For they’d freed adepts from narcissism’s ego-centric, erotically crippled, and polarized vision. This book will provide some of this missing perspective, and some of their practices, in the attempt to heal the century-long divorce between psychology and spirituality. For we humans aren’t pie charts. Psyche and spirit belong together. And we need all the help we can get.
Given all narcissism can impact—our eros, politics, global warming and pandemics—it’s time to re-vision it. But this “re-visioning,” and the skillful means it would offer can’t merely concern a few “adepts.” It’s now a planetary and evolutionary imperative.
THE AUTHOR
Gary Rosenthal studied at the Jung Institute-Zurich and is a licensed therapist, meditation teacher, and poet. His poetry titles include The You That is Everywhere—a book of ecstatic love poems whose back cover bears praise from fellow poets David Whyte and Coleman Barks. Gary lives in San Francisco’s East Bay, where he consults with clients from around the world by Skype, Zoom, and phone.
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