Ordinary Ecstasy

Humanistic Psychology ranges far and wide into education, management, gender issues and many other fields. Ordinary Ecstasy, first published in 1976, is widely regarded as one of the most important books on the subject. Although this new edition still contains much of the original material, it has been completely rethought in the light of postmodern ideas, with more emphasis on the paradoxes within humanistic psychology, and takes into account changes in many different areas, with a greatly extended bibliography. Ordinary Ecstasy is written not only for students and professionals involved in humanistic psychology - anyone who works with people in any way will find it valuable and interesting.

A new collection of stories by the award-winning author of An Elegant Young Man and Intimate Antipathies. The seven stories that make up An Ordinary Ecstasy explore the lives of people whose days are awash with enigma, wonder, and epiphany: a musician who rides the winding railway up into the mountains at dusk, the lost retiree who walks the streets of his suburb at dawn, the new lovers who take to their balcony to watch surfers make their incisions in the surging waves. There are middle-aged men in need of connection, journalists who dream of wild fancies while smiling and nodding through the drudgery of interviews, young couples whose losses are raw, and pass the time in ten-pin bowling. Carman’s new collection is founded on a principle observed by the novelist Joseph Conrad: ‘There is not a place of splendour or a dark corner of the earth that does not deserve, if only in passing, a glance of wonder.’ In stories of desire, grief, and exaltation, the collection reflects, as its title suggests, on life at its most ordinarily ecstatic — life, in other words, such as it is. Praise for Luke Carman: ‘Carman’s writing is characterised by verbal inventiveness, sitting somewhere between swagger and sincerity…street poetry for contemporary Australia.’ — Sydney Morning Herald ‘Brings a vast suburban emptiness to brilliant life.’ — The Australian

Those interested in the concept of ecstasy would be forgiven for assuming that a sober scholastic like St. Thomas Aquinas had little place for the idea. Yet in this groundbreaking study, sure to refine our understanding of the Angelic Doctor, Peter Kwasniewski shows that St. Thomas contemplates the nature of ecstasy at key stages in the development of his thought and that it plays a crucial role in his doctrine of love. After a stimulating study of treatments of ecstasy in ancient philosophy, Sacred Scripture, and the medieval tradition prior to Aquinas, Kwasniewski finds that he can be seen as breathing new life into the concept. While his contemporary, St. Bonaventure, for example, tended to restrict ecstasy to the soul’s union with God, St. Thomas admitted the place of ecstasy in a variety of human activities. Furthermore, St. Thomas recognized that all love involves ecstatic transcendence, whether it be the creature’s self-oblation to the Creator, the reverence of an inferior for a superior, a superior’s generosity toward an inferior, or the mutual affection and help of equals joined in friendship. Love of persons for their own sake generates an ecstatic love in which the self is borne as a gift to another subject by sharing a common life aspiring to common goods. Kwasniewski also examines Aquinas on the question of whether or not God experiences ecstasy, and if so, in what ways. The Ecstasy of Love in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the doctrine of love and to the interpretation of the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. It is more than an analysis of key texts; it is an illuminating guide to the grammar of ecstasy.

Humanistic Psychology ranges far and wide into education, management, gender issues and many other fields. Ordinary Ecstasy, first published in 1976, is widely regarded as one of the most important books on the subject. Although this new edition still contains much of the original material, it has been completely rethought in the light of postmodern ideas, with more emphasis on the paradoxes within humanistic psychology, and takes into account changes in many different areas, with a greatly extended bibliography. Ordinary Ecstasy is written not only for students and professionals involved in humanistic psychology - anyone who works with people in any way will find it valuable and interesting.

This book is a study of religious ecstasy, and the ways that it has been suppressed in both the academic study of religion, and in much of the modern practice of religion. It examines the meanings of the term, how ecstatic experience is understood in a range of religions, and why the importance of religious and mystical ecstasy has declined in the modern West. June McDaniel examines how the search for ecstatic experience has migrated into such areas as war, terrorism, transgression, sexuality, drug use, and anti-institutional forms of spirituality. She argues that the loss of religious and mystical ecstasy, as both a religious goal and as a topic of academic study, has had wide-ranging negative effects. She also proposes that the field of religious studies must go beyond criminalizing, trivializing and pathologizing ecstatic and mystical experiences. Both religious studies and theology need to take these states seriously as important aspects of lived human experience.

While traditional Christian thought and spirituality have always affirmed the divine presence in human life, Thatamanil argues we have much to learn from non-dualistic Hindu thought, especially that of the eighth-century thinker Sankara, and from the Christian panentheism of Paul Tillich. Thatamanil compares their diagnoses and prognoses of the human predicament in light of their doctrine of God or Ultimate Reality. What emerges is a new theology of God and human beings, with a richer and more radical conception of divine immanence, a reconceived divine transcendence, and a keener sense of how the dynamic and active Spirit at work in us anchors real hope and deep joy.Using key insights from Christian and Hindu thought Thatamanil vindicates comparative theology, expands the vocabulary about the ineffable God, and arrives at a new construal of the problems and prospects of the human condition.