Richard Tarnas
Author of The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas that Have Shaped Our World View
About the Author
Edited by Richard Tarnas and Sean Kelly, Psyche Unbound is an homage to one of the greatest clinicians in history and his powerful legacy of healing the soul and evolving human consciousness.
Image credit: Credit: Ginaloganphotography
Works by Richard Tarnas
The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas that Have Shaped Our World View (1991) 1,631 copies
Prometheus the Awakener: an Essay on the Archetypal Meaning of the Planet Uranus (Dunquin Series 21) (1998) 42 copies
Forms and Archetypes: Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View (2?) — Author — 2 copies
Õhtumaa vaimu passioon. 1 copy
Associated Works
Revisioning Transpersonal Theory: A Participatory Vision of Human Spirituality (2001) — Foreword, some editions — 45 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Tarnas, Richard
- Legal name
- Tarnas, Richard Theodore
- Birthdate
- 1950-02-21
- Gender
- male
- Nationality
- USA
Switzerland (birth) - Birthplace
- Geneva, Switzerland
- Places of residence
- Detroit, Michigan, USA
Big Sur, California, USA - Education
- University of Detroit Jesuit High School and Academy
Harvard University (BA|1972)
Saybrook Institute (PhD|1976) - Occupations
- cultural historian
depth psychologist
professor of philosophy and psychology
astrologer - Organizations
- Esalen Institute
California Institute of Integral Studies
Members
Reviews
Lists
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 21
- Also by
- 2
- Members
- 2,090
- Popularity
- #12,310
- Rating
- 4.0
- Reviews
- 13
- ISBNs
- 29
- Languages
- 6
- Favorited
- 2
Meanwhile I noticed that it consistently used "man" for "human". I presumed that meant it was fairly old - 1975 or earlier, maybe 1980 in a pinch - but when I checked, the book turned out to be copyright 1991. This caused me to hypothesize the author was middle aged or older when writing the book, or a hidebound reactionary.
As it turned out, he was something I find even worse. He was using this language to make a point, which he explains later on. And he shifts to normal language both in his notes and when he reached something resembling his present day. This male author regards "feminine" and "masculine" as well defined principles, presumably not culturally contingent. He sees the entirety of western cultural development as being masculine-centric, until "now", with the brilliant discoveries and innovations of psychologists like Stanislav Grof. Grof is, to put it politely, rather "fringe" in his theories, which have AFAICT become even less popular now than they were in 1991. Few people would discuss him in terms of "discoveries".
But that's only the start of my issues with Tarnas. AFAICT, he manages to give a fairly objective account of just about everything before 1900, maybe even a bit later. But after that, he writes like a true believer. He starts teaching about "truth" and "discovery" rather than "beliefs" and "theories" some time in the twentieth century, but the shift is gradual. Most of these "discoveries" come from psychiatry, and involve people like Freud, Jung, etc.
Among Tarnas' exotic beliefs: people who speak languages with grammatical gender, inevitably suffer from the same confusion of "man" with "human" common among English authors writing before the 1970s. If the word for "human being" is masculine gendered, such as the Greek anthropos, people who use it will inevitably and only somewhat consciously confuse it with the word for adult human male (andros in Greek). Their cultures will therefore be patriarchal, etc. etc. etc. (See p. 441.)
But my "throw this book across the room" moment was when, after telling me that centuries of androcentric bias were essential to the evolution of western ideas (p. 441), it was all going to be better now. All this masculinity had produced a masculine crisis, being resolved by "a tremendous emergence of the feminine in our culture" (p. 442) including the emergence of feminism. Also such feminine things as a sense of unity with the planet. "And this dramatic development is not just a compensation, not just a return of the repressed, ... [it has] ... been all along the underlying goal of Western intellectual and spiritual evolution." As I read it, women will now be useful for more than just making babies; they'll be valued for providing the "feminine principle" that more enlightened western men now recognize that they need. Wow! Such freedom! Women get new ways to serve the needs of men. (Yes, in spite of the obligatory claim that both principles are in all people, he's back to using "man" for "human", so I don't think he really means that women count as more than vessels of femininity.)
Don't read this book. If you skip the epilogue, which presents the author's theories, and use caution once it reaches the 20th century, it's probably adequate as an intellectual history. But such books are not especially rare; there are surely many competitors which are much more readable.… (more)