Wisdom and the Senses: The Way of Creativity - Softcover

Erikson, Joan M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393307107 ISBN 13: 9780393307108

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1991

Synopsis

"In this loving and vivid book, Joan Erikson gives us an artist's retracting of the human life cycle, beginning in the blessings of the senses and fulfilled in wisdom."―Mary Catherine Bateson

Joan Erikson explores the crucial role played by the physical sense at every stage of psychological growth from birth to old age, finding parallels between the creation of art as we usually define it and the creation of self―the most artful act of all. In the experience of making and doing, she located a primary source of human growth and vitality.

Wisdom and the Senses is itself a celebration of art, with the progressive stages in the life cycle revealed through woven charts, reproduced here in full color. The work of artists, much as the words and ideas of Joan Erikson, takes us on a journey of understanding that leads to the meaning of wisdom.

About this title

About the Author:

Joan Mowat Erikson was born in Canada; she earned her B.A. in Education at Columbia University and an M.A. in Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a teacher, writer, and craftsman and has worked with gold, silver, and precious stones. She is the author of a previous book, The Universal Bead. She is married to the noted psychoanalyst Erik H. Erikson.

From Library Journal:

This intelligent, idiosyncratic examination of the intellectual and emotional life cycle enlarges on Erik Erikson's now institutionalized psychological development theory, the basis for his former co-author and wife's present study of art's contribution to the wisdom attributed to old age. Hypothesizing that "creative experience demands of us only that which is genuinely our own . . . our personal, accrued store of sense data," Mrs. Erikson calls upon her fund of knowledge about Eastern and Western philosophy, the creative arts, and the lives of her dedicated artist friends to offer readers with imagination an engaging study of the play between creating and aging. Recommended for general as well as academic collections. Francisca Goldsmith, Golden Gate Univ. Lib., San Francisco
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0393307107
• ISBN 13: 9780393307108
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208