Maps of Meaning

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Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief is a 1999 work by Canadian clinical psychologist and psychology professor Jordan Peterson . The book describes a comprehensive theory of how humans construct meaning in ways that are consistent with modern scientific understanding of how the brain works. It examines the “structure of belief systems and the role these systems play in regulating emotionsplay "by using several academic fields to show that connecting myths and beliefs with science is essential to understanding how people make sense". The German first edition appeared in December 2018 under the title Why we think what we think: How our beliefs and myths arise .

background

Peterson wrote the book for over 13 years. In it he briefly reflects on his childhood and his upbringing in a Christian family. The answers to his questions about the literal truth of the biblical stories seemed ignorant, which caused him to lose interest in going to church. In his youth and early adulthood he tried to find the answer to "the general social and political madness and evil of the world" (from the Cold War to totalitarianism ) and for a short time he resorted to socialism and political science back. He felt unsatisfied with this and fell into a depression until he found inspiration in the ideas of Carl Gustav Jung and devoted himself to psychology . He began writing Maps of Meaning in the mid-1980s and used texts from there (which he dubbed "The Gods of War") during his lectures when he was an assistant professor of psychology at Harvard University . He intended to use it as the basis for a full-time job application at Harvard, but found he was emotionally not up to the task. My mood at the time wasn't of sufficient stability to feel that I was in the position to make the strongest case for myself, unfortunately . At the time he had two children and so the prospect of permanent employment was attractive and in 1998 he decided to accept an offer from the University of Toronto .

According to Craig Lambert in Harvard Magazine , the book is influenced by Jung's archetypal view of the collective unconscious and evolutionary psychology . It includes theories about religions and God, the natural origin of modern culture.

publication

The book was published in 1999 by Routledge Publishing . The hardcover edition was released in 2002, while the unabridged audiobook edition was released by Penguin Random House Audio on June 12, 2018. The audio book debuted at # 4 in the monthly Audio Nonfiction category on the New York Times bestseller list in July 2018.

content

“Something we can't see protects us from something we don't understand. What we cannot see is culture in its intrapsychic or internal manifestation. What we don't understand is the chaos that led to culture.

When the structure of culture is unknowingly disrupted, chaos returns. We will do everything - everything - to defend ourselves against this return. "

- Jordan Peterson, 1998 ( Descensus ad Inferos )

The main aim, according to Peterson, was to investigate why both individuals and groups participate in social conflict . He examines the thinking and motivation individuals take to sustain their belief systems (i.e., ideological identification ) that can ultimately lead to killings and pathological atrocities such as the Gulag , Auschwitz, and the Rwandan genocide . He believes that "an analysis of the world's religious ideas could enable us to describe our essential morals and ultimately develop a universal system of morals".

According to Peterson, there is a struggle between chaos (characteristic of the unknown, such as nature) and order (characteristic of explored, mapped territory, such as culture). People with their ability to think abstractly also form abstract territoriality - the belief systems that “ regulate our emotions ”. A potential threat to an important belief triggers emotional responses that are followed by potentially pathological attempts to face the inner chaos. "People generally go to war [...] rather than reformulating our challenged beliefs." The principle in between is logos ( consciousness ). Hero characters are those who develop culture and society as mediators between these two natural forces. In this sense, the "myth represents the eternal unknown (nature, creation and destruction), the eternal knowledge (culture, tyranny and protection) and the eternal knower (the process that mediates between the known and the unknown)", the eternal The knower is the hero who, like Saint George, “slays the dragon of chaos”, which leads to “maturity in the form of individuality”. Throughout the book, Peterson tries to explain how the mind works, while using illustrations with elaborate geometric diagrams (e.g., "The Constituent Elements of Experience as Personality, Territory, and Process").

meeting

Harvey Shepard wrote in a column for the Montreal Gazette : “To me, the book reflects the author's deep moral sense and erudition in areas ranging from clinical psychology to scripture and much personal searching [...] of Peterson Vision is based on both current scientific and pragmatic methods and important ways, very conservative and traditional methods. "Sheldon H. White of Harvard University describes it as a" brilliant extension of our understanding of human motivation ... a fine job "while Keith Oatley of the University of Toronto describes it as "unique ... a brilliant new synthesis of the meaning of mythology and our human need to tell in history the deep structure of our experiences".

Dan Blazer pointed out in the American Journal of Psychiatry that it “is not a book that should be abstracted and summarized. Rather, it should be read calmly (although it is anything but easy to read) and used as a suggestion and reference to expand your own maps of meaning . "Maxine Sheets-Johnstone described it in the Psycoloquy as" original, provocative, complex and fascinating book that is sometimes conceptually unsettling, overly repetitive, and annoying in its format, ”but the“ positive values ​​of the book far outweigh the disadvantages ”.

Psychologists Ralph W. Hood, Peter C. Hill and Bernard Spilka stated in their book The Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Approach (2009), referring to the relationship of the five-factor model to religion, that Peterson “in the dynamic Model of the tension between tradition and transformation as the basis of personality for what he calls the architecture of belief , “has explored masterfully.

In 2017, Camille Paglia commented that there was a connection between Maps of Meaning and her book Sexual Personae . Peterson noted that there had been a lack of serious criticism until 2018, and he "believed that people didn't know what to think of the book."

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Craig Lambert: Chaos, Culture, Curiosity . In: Harvard Magazine , September 1998. 
  2. ^ Joan McCord, Beyond Empiricism: Institutions and Intentions in the Study of Crime . Ed .: Transaction Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4128-1806-3 , page 178 ( google.com ).
  3. ↑ Gregory, Erik M .; Rutledge, Pamela B. (2016), Exploring Positive Psychology: The Science of Happiness and Well-Being , ABC-CLIO, p. 154, ISBN 978-1-61069-940-2
  4. ↑ Jordan B. Peterson: Why We Think What We Think: How Our Beliefs and Myths Are Made . Ed .: Münchner Verlagsgruppe GmbH. 2018, ISBN 978-3-86882-947-1 ( m-vg.de ).
  5. ↑ a b c d e f Tom Bartlett: What's So Dangerous About Jordan Peterson? . In: The Chronicle of Higher Education , January 17, 2018. Retrieved January 19, 2018. 
  6. ↑ a b c Kelefa Sanneh: Jordan Peterson's Gospel of Masculinity . In: The New Yorker , March 5, 2018. Retrieved March 3, 2018. 
  7. ^ Audio Nonfiction , The New York Times. July 1, 2018. Retrieved August 3, 2018. 
  8. ^ A b Anne C. Krendl: Jordan Peterson: Linking Mythology to Psychology . In: The Harvard Crimson , April 26, 1995. 
  9. ^ A b Summary and Guide to Jordan Peterson's Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief , August 2015, Scribd, pp. 2–3
  10. ^ A b Dan Blazer: Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief . In: American Journal of Psychiatry . 157, No. 157, Feb. 1, 2000, pp. 299-300. doi : 10.1176 / appi.ajp.157.2.299-a .
  11. ↑ Harvey Shepherd: Meaning from Myths . In: Montreal Gazette , November 11, 2003. 
  12. ↑ Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief Paperback . In: Amazon.com . Retrieved March 3, 2018.
  13. ↑ Maxine Sheets-Johnstone: The psychology of what is and what should be: An experiential and moral psychology of the known and the unknown: Review of Peterson on Meaning-Belief . In: Psycoloquy . 11, No. 124, 2000. Retrieved March 4, 2018.
  14. ↑ Ralph W. Hood, Peter C. Hill, Bernard Spilka: The Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Approach , 4th Edition, Guilford Press, 2009, ISBN 978-1-60623-392-4 , pp. 236-237.