Illusion

The ways we know, think and believe about a whole variety of key areas - different forms of discourse, psychotherapy as well as religion - have much more in common than is usually perceived. Through a series of fascinating parallels running across different disciplines, Jacobs demonstrates the possible analysis of modes of thinking and belief - from intuitive pre-thinking, through authoritative-driven thinking and belief, and personal and polymathic knowledge, to unknowing, the last concept being one that is shared by Bion, Winnicott and major mystical tradition. Using this theoretical model the book provides a map to how clients and indeed therapists might think and believe, suggesting ways in which they may be supported as they shift through different modes, with all the anxiety that disillusionment brings. Preface.

Author's Note.

Chapter 1. Illusions of knowledge and belief.

Chapter 2. World-views.

Chapter 3. Intuitive pre-thinking and belief.

Chapter 4. Authority-driven belief and objective knowledge.

Chapter 5. Personal and polymathic thinking and belief.

Chapter 6. Un-knowing.

References.

Index.

Michael Jacobs is Visiting Professor in the School of Public Policy at University College London. An environmental economist and political theorist, his work has focused on the political economy of environmental change. His books include The Green Economy: Environment, Sustainable Development and the Politics of the Future, Greening the Millennium? The New Politics of the Environment - ed, Blackwell, 1997 -, The Politics of the Real World and Paying for Progress: A New Politics of Tax for Public Spending - Fabian Society 2000 -. From 2004-10 he was a Special Adviser to the UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, responsible for domestic and international policy on environment, energy and climate change, and before that a member of the Council of Economic Advisers at the UK Treasury. He was formerly General Secretary of the Fabian Society, Co-Editor of The Political Quarterly and a research fellow at Lancaster University and the London School of Economics. He has also been a Visiting Professor at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the LSE, a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research and Senior Adviser to the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, which he helped to found.