Self in Transformation: Psychoanalysis, Philosophy and the Life of the Spirit by Herbert Fingarette. (1963).
What I love about this book:
The first time I fully understood that language is constitutive of experience. Loevinger quotes his view of the ego as “ego’s organizational or synthetic function is not just another thing the ego does, it is what the ego is.”
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The Denial of Death by Earnest Becker. (1973).
What I love about this book:
While in many ways outdated, Becker, a cultural anthropologist, argues that the fear of death has influenced how humans cope with mortality across history and the globe. The main means have been rituals, belief in higher powers, or unity with the universe. All are forms of storytelling. How readily we are deceiving ourselves of who we are is part of his Becker’s conclusion.
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Narrative truth and historical truth: Meaning and interpretation in psychoanalysis by Donald P. Spence. (1982).
What I love about this book:
Spence’s book makes the crucial distinction between truth based on lived experience and factual or historical truth. This book clarified for me why “ego” is the quintessential storyteller and inventor of the self in the service of survival and feeling good.
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Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer. (2013).
What I love about this book:
A basic book of Indigenous wisdom counteracting our WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic) conceptions of the human relationship to the m-more-than-human world and time.
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The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (Vol. 1 and vol. 2) by Ed. William Little et al. (1964).
What I love about this book:
For a student of philology and learning English, this was my essential reference book since beginning my University studies in 1965. This was long before the internet. It has the history of words, their changing meaning and uses. Fun just to consult.
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The Wisdom of the Ego by George E. Vaillant. (1998).
What I love about this book:
This book gave me a healthy look at the mind and its creative nature as an organizing force, a process, and a product in and of itself that helped to facilitate our negotiating and living out our reality as human beings.
Queer Flourishing: A Guide to Personal Growth and Greater Aliveness for LGBTQ+ Adults by F. Dominic Longo, PhD. (2024).
What I love about this book:
It "brings queer perspectives to the research on adult development and its map of developmental stages", and "contends that to grow into highly effective leaders and to live lives of flourishing, queer adults must attend to the woundedness of the most tender and powerful parts of themselves."
Selective List of Foundational Reads
Books I Love
And Return to For Sustenance
This list contains books from when I first began to create a personal library in the 1960’s as a humanist with a curious mind.
It does not include any works and publications referring to developmental theories or references to the vast opus of Ken Wilber.
Books that influenced my thinking and becoming
Not included in this list are books and papers on developmental theory and measurement as well as Ken Wilber’s extensive opus.
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Angyal, Andras. (1965). Neurosis and Treatment: A Holistic Theory. New York; The Viking Press.
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Bakan, D. (1966). The duality of human experience. Chicago: Rand Mc.Nally.
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Alexander, C. N., & Langer E. (Eds.). (1990). Higher stages of human development: Perspectives on adult growth. New York: Oxford University Press.
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Bateson, Gregory. (1972). Steps to an ecology of mind. New York: Ballantine Books.
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Berger, P. L., & Luckmann, T. (1966). The social construction of reality. New York: Doubleday.
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Bronowski, Jacob. (1973). The ascent of man. Boston: Little, Brown and Company
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Bohm, D. (1980). Wholeness and the implicate order. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
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Buber, Martin. (1970). I and Thou. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Trans. W. Kaufmann.
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Campbell, Joseph. (1949). The hero with a thousand faces. Princeton: Princeton University Press, ed.1968
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Capra, Fritjof. (1976). The Tao of physics. New York: Bantam Books.
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Chomsky, Noam. (1965). Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
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Congleton, Christina (2024). Getting over ourselves: Moving beyond a culture of burnout-loneliness, and narcissism. Wiley & Sons, new Jersey, Hoboken. ISBN 978 139-4-16985-6
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Commons, M. L., C. Armon, L. Kohlberg, J. D. Sinnott , F . A. Richards, T. A. Grotzer, & (Eds.) (1990). Adult development vol. 2, Models and methods in the study of adolescent and adult thought. New York: Praeger. ISB 0275927555
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Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper and Row. ISBN 0-06-092043-2
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Das Ram Baba (Alpert, Richard), (1978). Remember be here now. New York. The Brown Publishing Group.
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De Saussure, Ferdinand (1916/1959). Course in general linguistics. New York: McGraw-Hill.
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Edwards, B. (1987). Drawing from the artist within: An inspirational and practical guide to increasing your creative powers. New York, NY. Simon & Schuster.
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Farson, R. (1996). Management of the absurd: Paradoxes in leadership. New York: Simon & Schuster.
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Fromm, E. (1956). The art of loving. new York: Harper & Row.
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Gawande, A. (2014). Being mortal: Medicine and what matters in the end. Metropolitan Books, NY: Herny Holt and company.
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Gardner, Howard (1983). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. New York, NY: Basic Books.
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Gardner, Martin (1982). Gotcha: Paradoxes to puzzle and delight. New York: W. H. Freeman & Company.
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Gergen, Kenneth, J. (1984). The social constructivist movement in modern psychology. American Psychologist, 40, 266-275.
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Gladwell, Malcolm. (2005). Blink: the power of thinking without thinking. New York: Little, Brown and Co.
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Goedel, K. (1931). Some metamathematical results on completeness and consistency, on formally undecidable propositions of Principia Mathematica and related systems, and on completeness and consistency. In Jean van Heijenoort (Ed.), From Frege to Goedel: A source book in mathematical Logic (pp. 592-617). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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Goleman, Daniel. 1995: Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. New York: Bantam Books.
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Hall, Edward T. (1966). The hidden dimension. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.
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Heifetz, R. H. (1994). Leadership without easy answers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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Heisenberg, W. (1958). Physics and philosophy: The revolution in modern science. New York: Harper & Row.
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Henrich, Joseph., Heine Steven, & Norenzayan, Ara. The weirdest people in the world? In Behavioral and brain sciences (2010) pp. 1-75. doi:10.1017/S0140525X0999152X
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Hofstadter, Douglas. (1997). Le ton beau de Marot: In praise of the music of language. New York: Basic books.
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Hofstadter, Douglas (1979). Goedel, Escher, Bach: An eternal golden braid. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-02656-7.
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Hofstadter, Richard (1963) Anti-intellectualism in American life. Alfred A. Knopf and Random house, Inc.
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Huizinga Johan, (1938). Homo ludens: A study of the play-element in culture trhttps://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23311983.2016.1245087
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Hunter, Lewis. (2000). The beguiling serpent: A re-evaluation of emotions and values. Mt Jacksonville, VA: Axios Press
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James, William. (1890). The principles of psychology. New York: Henry Holt.
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James, Willian. (1902/1961). The varieties of religious experience. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company.
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Johnson, Barry. (1992). Polarity management: identifying and managing unsolvable problems. Amherst. MA: HRD Press.
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Jung, Carl Gustav. (1997). Man & His Symbols. Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group.
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Klein, J. (1987). Our need for others and its roots in infancy. London: Tavistock Publications
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Kluckhohn, C. (1949). Mirror of man: Anthropology and modern life. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Inc.
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Korzybski, Alfred. (1948). Science and sanity: An introduction to non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics (3rd. ed.). Lakeville, CT: Int. Non-Aristotelian Library Publishing Co.
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Kuhn Thomas (1962). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
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Laing, Ronald David. (1979). Knots. New York: Pantheon Books.
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Langer, Susan K (1942). Philosophy in a new key: A study in the symbolism of reason, rite, and art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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Levine, Stephen. (1982). Who dies? An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying. New York: Anchor Books, a Division of Random House, Inc,
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Little W., Fowler, H. & Coulson. The Shorter Oxford English dictionary on historical principles (1964). Edited by C. T. Onions. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press (1900 pages)
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Macy, J. R. (1983). Despair and personal power in the nuclear age. Philadelphia, PA: New Society Publishers.
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Maslow, A. H. (1971). The farther reaches of human nature. New York: Penguin Books.
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Maturana, Humberto, R. & Varela, Francisco, J. (1987). The tree of knowledge: The biological roots of human understanding. Boston: Shambhala Publications, Inc.
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May Rollo (1975). The courage to create. New York: W. W. Norton and Co.
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McDonald, Helen (2016). H is for Halk. Random House, Vintage books ISBN978-0-099-57545-0***
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Mead, M. (1935). Sex and temperament in three primitive societies. New York: Morrow.
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Merlot, A. (1962). Précis d’histoire de la littérature française. Paderborn, Germany.: Ferdinand Schoningh. Regarding Pensee of Blaise Pascal
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Mezirow, J. (1991). Transformative dimensions of adult learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
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Naisbitt, J. (1984). Megatrends: Ten new directions transforming our lives. New York, NY: Warner Books.
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Nietzsche, Friedrich W. (1886). Beyond Good and Evil, translated by Walter Kaufmann, New York: Random House, 1966
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Nouwen, H. J. M. (1979). The wounded healer. New York: Doubleday
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Otto, Beatrice, K. (2007). Fools are everywhere: The court jester around the world. University of Chicago Press.
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Pearce, Joseph Chilton. (1973). The crack in the cosmic egg. Pocket Books. ISBN: 0671781219
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Pinker, Steven. (1994). The language instinct: How the mind creates language. New York: HarperCollins.
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Pirsig, Robert M. (1974). Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. New York: Bantam
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Rawls, J. (1971, 1999). A theory of justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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Rheingold, Howard. (1988). They have a word for it: A lighthearted lexicon of untranslatable words and phrases. Los Angeles: Tarcher.
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Riso, D. R. & Hudson, R. (1999) The wisdom of the Enneagram: The complete guide to psychological and spiritual growth for the nine personality types. New York: Bantam Books.
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Rogers, C. (1965). Client centered therapy. Its current practice, implications, and theory. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.
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Russell, Mary Doria. (1996). The sparrow. New York: Random House
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Sacks, Oliver. The mind’s eye. The New Yorker. July 28,. 2003, pp. 48-59.
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Sapir, E. (1921). Language: An introduction to the study of speech. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.
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Sartre, Jean Paul (1944). No exit. New York: Vintage International
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Seligman, Martin. (1990). Learned optimism. New York, Knopf.
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Sherman Jeremy. (2017). Neither ghost nor machine: The emergence and nature of selves. NY, New York: Columbia University Press.
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Smith Kenwyn. & Berg, David. (1987). Paradoxes of Group Life. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.
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Sullivan, H. S. (1953). The interpersonal theory of psychiatry. New York: Norton & Co.
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Szasz, Tamas S. (1974). The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct (revised ed.). New York: Harper & Row Publishers. Pp 117–19. ISBN 978-0060911515.
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Thoreau, H. D. (1854). Walden. Many editions.
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Trungpa, Chögyam (1987). Cutting through spiritual materialism. Boston: Shambhala.
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Verghese, Abraham (2010). Cutting for stone. New York: Vintage Books
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Von Bertalanffy, Ludwig. (1968). General systems theory. New York: Braziller.
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Vygotsky, Lev. S. (1962). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (Originally published in 1934.)
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Walsh, Roger (2024). Shamanism: New views of an ancient Tradition. 2nd ed. Irvine, CA: University of California at Irvine.
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Whitehead, Alfred North. (1941). “Autobiographical notes.” In P. A. Schilpp (Ed.), The philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. New York: Tudor.
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Whitehead, Alfred North. (1941). Process and reality. New York: Macmillan company.
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Whorf, Benjamin L. (1956). Language, thought and reality. New York: Wiley.
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Wilson, Edward. O. (1979) On Human Nature. Harvard University Press
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Wittgenstein, L. (1935/58). Philosophical investigations. Oxford: Basil Blackwel
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Wyatt, Karen. M. (2011). What really matters: 7 lessons for living from the stories of the dying. New York: Select Books.
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Yunkaporta, Tyson. (2020). Sand talk: How Indigenous thinking can save the world. New York, NY. Harper Collins Publ.