Why have people from different cultures and eras formulated myths and stories with similar structures? What does this similarity tell us about the mind, morality, and structure of the world itself? From the author of 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos comes a provocative hypothesis that explores the connection between what modern neuropsychology tells us about the brain and what rituals, myths, and religious stories have long narrated. A cutting-edge work that brings together neuropsychology, cognitive science, and Freudian and Jungian approaches to mythology and narrative, Maps ofMeaning presents a rich theory that makes the wisdom and meaning of myth accessible to the critical modern mind.
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
