Animals of the Four Windows: Integrating Thinking, Sensing, Feeling and Imagery

This is a profoundly important, provocative, and groundbreaking book – the first clear and comprehensive introduction to the four modes of human knowing. Dr Gallegos thesis – that there are in fact four windows, that they are of equal value and power, and that our survival depends on re-dressing are over-reliance upon thinking – appears, at first, to be a revelation. But then we settle into a deeper remembering that this is something we have always known, before we were taught and trained otherwise. Indeed, reading this book initiates our own Journey of Return to our original balance of knowing. It is a must read for all educators, all psychotherapists, all parents… Really for all human denizens of 20th-century self-destroying industrial-growth society. Bill Plotkin Ph.D. Clinical Psychologist. Steve Gallegos presents us here with a new approach and proof of its validity... The process is for the sake of reaching wholeness and with that liberation. One might say that he lets the divine in us have its say, because it is in us and manifests all the time, but we can hear it only if we listen and do not interfere with our analyzing minds ...One would wish that this book be widely read by educators and psychologists and used as a new and effective approach. Here is a true “revisioning” of psychology and a powerful means to understanding and respecting our depth. Edith Wallace, M.D., Ph.D. Author of A Queen's Quest“In this new book Stephen Gallegos has opened his conceptual windows wider than before, to include the four human faculties also discussed by Carl Jung. Thinking, feeling and sensation are presented similarly to Jung's system, but his new twist is creatively insightful: the fourth function is imagery, not intuition as Jung has it. (Gallegos envisions intuition as potential to all the functions.) Deep imagery, alive with its own suchness, as are the animals, is not just to be manipulated for our own ends as in some psychological systems of guided imagery, but respected for its own inner vitality and wisdom. It is a revitalization of the human soul from within that is the real goal of Stephen Gallegos' approach. The reader will find his prose clear and inviting while he reveals to us a new (yet very old) way of revisioning our minds. This book is a must for those interested in self-exploration, guided imagery, and the never-ending, self-transformative work of the creative shaman. Stephen Larsen, Author of The Shamans Doorway and The Mythic ImaginationThe Animals of the Four Windows presents an overview of the four modes of knowing; Thinking, Sensing, Imagery and Feeling. While it has certain similarities to Jung's ideas on the same topic, its major difference is that it distinguishes between Imagery and Intuition in a way Jung did not. The book describes how the ways of knowing have been distorted and how we have moved out of balance, with a strong bias towards thinking and sensing and a lack of value on Imagery and Feeling. It explores the possibility of a return by the Four Ways of Knowing to a balanced relationship with one another, in each individual as a way of healing and of accessing our deep inner wisdom.

Eligio Stephen Gallegos, Ph.D, is discoverer of the Personal Totem Pole Process© , a unique form of interactive deep imagery. The PTPP© is now an internationally acclaimed discipline, with practitioners worldwide. It is a blend of the theory of active imagination which was developed by Dr. C. G. Jung, the Eastern theoretical orientation which understands the human being as a system of interrelated energies or chakras, and the Native American practice of speaking to and learning from the animals.

Steve Gallegos considers himself first and foremost a craftsman. He has worked in leather, wood, silver, stained glass, antique furniture restoration, painting, and most recently has been carving fossilized walrus teeth and painting Russian icons. He is certain that had he not been required to attend school he would today be a deeply contented and illiterate craftsman.

He was born in 1934 to Eligio Gallegos and Katherine Powers Gallegos in the small village of Los Lunas, New Mexico, where he attended school and longed for summer vacation. During a sojourn in the Air Force he travelled around Europe as often as he could and began reading, discovering learning as opposed to schooling. He subsequently obtained degrees in psychology from the University of Wisconsin, New Mexico State University, and Florida State University. He spent many years as a Professor of Psychology, and served as Chairman of the Department of Psychology at Mercer University.

He currently spends his time training therapists and others in the use of animal imagery ie The Personal Totem Pole Process© and gives workshops in the use of imagery in growth and psychotherapy in various cities of the US and Europe (Ireland, Germany, Switzerland and Austria).The PTPP© has many applications other than in Psychotherapy alone. It has been used by medical practitioners, with children, on vision quests and by artists and writers and other creative individuals and by those interested in their own personal growth.

Dr Gallegos was a co-founder of Returning to Earth Institute, a program that guided people into the wilderness on vision quests and helps them return to the experiential ground of their being.