Contents
CHAPTER ONE
The Subjective Experience: A Brief Preview
CHAPTER TWO
Two Mentalistic Portraits
CHAPTER THREE
Workings of the Mind: Consciousness and the Unconscious.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Unfolding of Life: The Genetic Endowment
CHAPTER FIVE
The Evolutionary Archetypes: Values and Needs
CHAPTER SIX
One of the Line: Values and needs
CHAPTER SEVEN
Affected Connectedness: The Qualia Web
CHAPTER EIGHT
Talking to the Stars: The Quanta Web
CHAPTER NINE
Putting it All Together
CHAPTER TEN
Some Closing Reflections
Professional Acclaim
“Landscapes in my Mind is a perceptive and sensitive discussion of one of the most puzzling and exciting areas of modern research. It should be read by all who wish to understand the sciences of the coming century”
Alwyn Scott
Professor of Applied Mathematics Author of Stairway to the Mind.
“The major unsolved scientific problem of our day is the nature of consciousness. Using examples as varied as the inner experience of a chess Grandmaster, psychiatric interviews with multiple personalities and intimate play with a wild African antelope, Sanguineti explores in evocative depth what it "feels like" to be a human mind and connects this experience with the immense unconscious mystery out of which it naturally arises. Combining sensitive introspection with informed scientific speculation, this book is a first class contribution to our fledging science of consciousness”
Nick Herbert
Author of Elemental Mind and Quantum Reality
“Dr. Sanguineti takes on a most difficult subject, the landscape of subjectivity, "the ultimate and most universal of all human frontiers." While neurology studies the brain, LANDSCAPES describes the texture of mind. The former reality may be objectively studied, yet may only be experienced from the subjective perspective of the latter. This dilemma has dogged the tracks of classical philosophy, contemporary neurology and psychiatry, and the current practice of psychotherapy. LANDSCAPES is a bold effort to bridge those gaps, to track and describe the experience of subjectivity, and to bring a sensitive, discerning, scientific eye to the subject. The study comes alive through Dr. Sanguineti's personal anecdotes which exemplify his point to be sure, but also bridge the gulf between brain and mind, between objectivity and subjectivity, and between behavior and psyche.”
James Hollis, Ph.D.
Director of the C.G. Jung Educational Center of Houston, Texas Author of numerous books including The Middle Passage: from Misery to Meaning at Mid-Life and The Eden Project: in Search of the Magical Other.
“In a voice that skillfully combines discovered truths with received wisdom, Sanguineti speaks of the fundamental nature of human subjectivity. Reflecting deeply on experiences in his personal life as well as on interactions with patients, he offers us a magical encounter with the complexities of psychic reality. The ground he covers is familiar but his viewpoint is novel and the literature he cites is not widely known, hence fresh and exciting. His meditative, existential perspective holds the promise to complement and enrich the usual ways we psychoanalysts have to understand the workings of human mind.”
Salman Akhtar, M.D.
Professor of Psychiatry, Jefferson Medical College, Training and Supervising Analyst, Philadelphia Psychoanalytic Institute, Author of numerous books including Broken Structures: severe personality disorders and their treatment and Inner Torment: living between conflict and fragmentation.
“Philosophy has long considered itself to be the intellectual watchdog of problems concerning personhood and the subjective sense of self. With the advent of modern neuroscience and sophisticated diagnostic techniques in neuropsychiatry and neuropsychology, objective light has been cast on such subjective domains of inquiry. In this intriguing book, Sanguineti uses his expertise as a psychiatrist to navigate through some uncharted territories of the inner soul. It is a personal tale, one rich in intuitions.”
Marc Hauser, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of Psychology and Anthropology Program in Neourosciences, Harvard University.
“Hiding even from itself the way it works, the human mind-brain represents the penultimate mystery -- second only to the nature of the Creator and Creation. In a bold and self-revealing treatise on the subjective experience, Vincenzo Sanguineti, M.D. adds valuable insights and theories into the hierarchy of mental processes that emerge as thoughts. For those with the intellectual curiosity and courage to think about thinking, Dr. Sanguineti's book is well worth reading.”
Marshall Goldberg, M.D.
Physician-novelist, Professor of Medicine and Psychiatry, Jefferson Medical College.
Post publication comments
“Dear Vincenzo--
Thanks for the finished copy of your "Landscapes in my Mind". It's a great picturing of what goes on inside our heads. Your work is in essence an attempt to evoke a sense of the "subconscious" world that underlies (surrounds, overlays) our everyday conscious experiences. Freud and Jung spent years also trying to do this and your work invites comparison to these men. Freud seemed to picture the subconsious as a somewhat sinister and shameful MECHANISM, full of primitive, unruly "drives" while Jung pictured it in more favorable but MYTHOLOGICAL terms, the repository of the Collective Dreams of Mankind. You seem to have emphasized the BIOLOGICAL basis of this immense power that underlies our every act and the deep connectedness with nature that Lies ever at hand waiting to be accessed. Your work increases my appreciation for the mystery we are and are in. warm regards”
Nick Herbert
“Dear Vincenzo,
Your ability to express the complexity and simplicity of the subjective experience is -- as the kids now say -- awesome. I loved "slicing tomatoes" as one personal expression of "all that exists is available at all times". I believe these things to be true and the better we convey this in our work, the more useful is the process of psychotherapy to both "therapist" and " patient".”
(A therapist)
“Dear Vincenzo - Thank you. Thank you. What an adventure your book is for me -- when I'm so involved with reading, writing and teaching poetry. How well you touch (daringly I think) the subjective self -- the resonance of metaphoric thinking and the way the unconscious (from those enduring "landscapes of the mind") insinuate itself into human thinking and acting. …. So much of your exploration rings true. Even as a layman, it informs me: characteristics of the affective world, high and low states in thinking and perceiving (I must read Gelernter) the central phenomenon of intentionality, affective weighing and the power of the genetic library.…Today when I worked with a community of poets at Sarah Lawrence College, I thought about this impressive, daring inquiry. How relevant your understanding and language are -- to the acts of writing poetry, making music and art. …”