Table of Contents

Preface: Descensus ad Inferos

1. Maps of Experience: Object and Meaning

2. Maps of Meaning: Three Levels of Analysis
Normal and RevolutionaryLife: Two Prosaic Stories
Neuropsychological Function:The Nature of the Mind
Mythological Representation:TheConstitutent Elements of Experience

3. Apprenticeship and Enculturation: Adoption of a Shared Map

4. The Appearance of Anomaly: Challenge to the Shared Map
Introduction: The Paradigmatic Structure ofthe Known
Particular Forms of Anomaly
The Rise ofSelf-Reference, and the Permanent Contamination ofAnomaly with Death

5. The Hostile Brothers: Archetypes of Response to the Unknown
Introduction:The Hero and the Adversary
The Adversary: Emergence,Development and Representation
Heroic Adaptation:Voluntary Reconstruction of the Map ofMeaning
Conclusion: The Divinity of Interest

About the Author

Jordan B. Peterson is a clinical psychologist and Professor at the University of Toronto and was formerly at Harvard University. He has published numerous articles on drug abuse, alcoholism and aggression.

Reviews

"The book reflects its author's profound moral sense and vast erudition in areas ranging from clinical psychology to scripture and a good deal of personal soul-searching and experience...with patients who include prisoners, alcoholics and the mentally ill." -- Montreal Gazette
"This is not a book to be abstracted and summarized. Rather it should be read at leisure...and employed as a stimulus and reference to expand one's own maps of meaning. I plan to return to Peterson's musings and mapping many times over the next few years." -- Am JPsychiatry
"...a brilliant enlargement of our understanding of human motivation...a beautiful work." -- Sheldon H. White, Harvard University
"...unique...a brilliant new synthesis of the meaning of mythologies and our human need to relate in story form the deep structure of our experiences." -- Keith Oatley, University of Toronto