An edition of The Wisdom of the Ego (1993)

The wisdom of the ego

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Last edited by MARC Bot
July 23, 2024 | History
An edition of The Wisdom of the Ego (1993)

The wisdom of the ego

  • 4 Want to read

Something horrible happens, and our minds play tricks on us, tell us that it never happened, occurred differently than it did, isn't quite what it seems. Such trickery, George Vaillant tells us, is actually healthy. What's more, it can reveal the mind at its most creative and mature, soothing and protecting us in the face of unbearable reality, managing the unmanageable, ordering disorder. In The Wisdom of the Ego, Vaillant, one of America's preeminent psychiatrists, gives us an exhilarating look at how the mind's defenses work, and at how they evolve and change, and so, change us.

Freud tells us that the first five years of life constitute destiny. If this were so, Vaillant asks, then how could so many deeply troubled youths become well-adjusted, productive adults? Drawing on the Study of Adult Development, based at Harvard University, this book takes us into the lives of such individuals - thriving men and women who suffered grievous disadvantages and abuses during childhood - to show us that the mind's remarkable defenses develop well into adulthood, that the maladjustments of adolescence can evolve into the virtues of maturity. In one fascinating case after another, he introduces us to middle-aged men and women learning how to love, to make meaning, to reorder chaos.

Because creativity is so intrinsic to this alchemy of the ego, Vaillant mingles these life studies with psychobiographies of famous artists and others. We meet Florence Nightingale, the intractable hypochondriac and hopeless dreamer who, at the age of thirty-one, wrote in her diary, "I see nothing desirable but death," and we watch as she transforms her anguish into altruism, her hapless fantasies into fantastic success. In the tormented life of Sylvia Plath, we see psychosis as not only a defect but also an effort at repair, her poetry as an extraordinary illustration of the adaptive process. We witness the mature working of the mind's defenses in the career of Anna Freud, their greatest elucidator. And we see the wisdom of the ego at work as Eugene O'Neill evolves from self-destructive youth to creator of great art.

In these compelling portraits of obscure and famous lives, Vaillant charts the evolution of the ego's defenses, from the psychopathic to the sublime, and from the mundane to the most ingenious. An account of the boundless psychological resilience of adult development, The Wisdom of the Ego is a brilliant summation of the mind's amazing power to fashion creative victories out of life's would-be defeats.

Publish Date
Language
English
Pages
394

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Previews available in: English

Edition Availability
Cover of: The Wisdom of the Ego
The Wisdom of the Ego
July 21, 1998, Harvard University Press
Paperback in English
Cover of: The wisdom of the ego
The wisdom of the ego
1993, Harvard University Press
in English

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Book Details


Edition Notes

Includes bibliographical references (p. [365]-382) and index.

Published in
Cambridge, Mass

Classifications

Dewey Decimal Class
155.2/4
Library of Congress
BF175.5.D44 V35 1993, BF175.5.D44V35 1993

The Physical Object

Pagination
394 p. :
Number of pages
394

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL1732655M
Internet Archive
wisdomofego00vail
ISBN 10
067495372X
LCCN
92037342
OCLC/WorldCat
26856357, 70406180
Library Thing
1692557
Goodreads
1387112

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History

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July 23, 2024 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
January 6, 2023 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
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December 10, 2009 Created by WorkBot add works page