The Psychology Of Meaning

Explores the multifaceted nature of this highly subjective construct. Contributors to this groundbreaking edited volume examine the phenomenological, empirical, and clinical aspects of people's reactions to the loss of meaning, to uncertainty, and to meaning violations. The book concludes with a scholarly, clinical chapter on how psychotherapy can help restore meaning in one's life.

This book offers an inspiring exploration of current findings from the psychology of meaning in life, analysing cutting-edge research to propose practical, evidence-based applications. Schnell draws on psychological, philosophical and cognitive perspectives to explore basic concepts of meaning and introduce a multidimensional model of meaning in life. Written in an accessible style, this book covers a range of topics including the distinction between meaning and happiness, the impact of meaning on health and longevity, meaning in the workplace, and meaning-centred interventions. Each chapter ends with exercises to encourage self-reflection and measurement tools are presented throughout, including the author’s original Sources of Meaning and Meaning in Life Questionnaire (SoMe), to inspire the reader to consider the role of meaning in their own life. The Psychology of Meaning in Life is essential reading for students and practitioners of psychology, sociology, counselling, coaching and related disciplines, and for general readers interested in exploring the role of meaning in life.

This volume contains perspectives from a collection of cognitive scientists on the psychological, philosophical, and educational issues surrounding the meanings of words and how these meanings are learned and accessed. It features chapters covering the nature and structure of word meaning, how new word meanings are acquired in childhood and later on in life, and how research in word processing may tell us something about the way in which word meanings are represented and how they relate to the language processor.

From moral philosophy and existentialism to the clinical realm of psychotherapy, The Psychology of Meaning explores the multifaceted nature of this highly subjective construct. The volume's contributors examine meaning along five dimensions the architecture of meaning, responding to uncertainty, meaning from retrospection, compensating for meaning violations, and restoring meaning: physiological and neurocognitive mechanisms.The editors of this groundbreaking work bring together top researchers and scholars to explore the crucial intersection of the psychological and philosophical dimensions of psychic life. Contributors to this sweeping survey examine not only the many phenomenological aspects of meaning, but also the clinical aspects of people's reactions to the loss of meaning, to uncertainty, and to meaning violations when things that were once central to one's life no longer make much sense. The book concludes with a scholarly, clinical survey of how psychotherapy can help restore meaning in the face of persistent meaning violations.Written for scholars and students in introductory or advanced social psychology courses, The Psychology of Meaning will also appeal to clinicians specializing in existential humanistic psychotherapy.

This book is a first attempt to combine insights from the two perspectives with regard to the question of meaning by examining a collection of theoretical and empirical works. This volume therefore is destined to become an important addition to psychological literature: both from the viewpoint of the history of ideas (again this would be one of the first times that positive and existentialist psychologies meet) and from the viewpoint of theoretical and empirical research into the meaning concept in psychology.

Papers and presentations from conferences held by the International Network on Personal Meaning. Articles are included from luminaries such as Howard Gardner, Harold Koenig, Sal Maddi, Jordan Peterson, Donald Meichenbaum, Crystal Park, Paul Wong, Kirk Schneider, and Bernard Weiner. Freshly edited and typeset, this book contains a broad range of essays on meaning and spirituality. The Positive Psychology of Meaning and Spirituality contains a number of must-have essays on topics from suffering, death, and grieving to meaning, spirituality, and virtues.

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 of Meaning presents a rich theory that makes the wisdom and meaning of myth accessible to the critical modern mind.

This book brings attention to the interface of psychotherapy and psychological theory with the somatic practices of bodywork and movement therapy. To offer a client only psychotherapy, or only bodywork may subtly or directly reinforce the body-mind split from which so many of us suffer; in some cases this will be a reinforcement of a dilemma central to the client's problems. Hartley views body psychotherapy and transpersonal psychotherapy as building bridges between the once separated processes of psyche, soma, and spirit. Today the emerging field of somatic psychology is also contributing to the expanded field of psychology a subtle differentiation of bodymind process, developed through almost a century and a half of research and practice in somatic therapy and education. Originally trained as a dancer, movement therapist and bodywork practitioner, Hartley continues to use movement and somatic process as an important foundation for her own work. Training in Dance Movement Therapy, the transpersonal psychotherapy of Psychosynthesis, and Process-Oriented Psychology have further deepened Hartley's awareness of the relationships between psyche, soma and spirit, and the need to respond to all levels of experience in therapeutic work.