"The book is persuasively insightful and an excellent translation of phenomenological-hermeneutical ideas,
resonating with the works of Hegel, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and others, into a practical application concerning
the nature of therapy."
--Shaun Gallagher, editor of Hegel, History, and Interpretation
"This is a daring book. Russon has clearly challenged many prejudices. He describes experiences that question
the prejudice about presence, about our bodies being mass or extension, about memory being subjective, and about
the normal self being understood as a 'self-contained choosing power.'"
--Leonard Lawlor, coeditor of Chiasms: Merleau-Ponty's Notion of Flesh
Publisher Web Site, December, 2003
Summary
Proposes that philosophy is the proper cure for neurosis.
John Russon's Human Experience draws on central concepts of contemporary European philosophy to develop a novel
analysis of the human psyche. Beginning with a study of the nature of perception, embodiment, and memory, Russon
investigates the formation of personality through family and social experience. He focuses on the importance of
the feedback we receive from others regarding our fundamental worth as persons, and on the way this interpersonal
process embeds meaning into our most basic bodily practices: eating, sleeping, sex, and so on. Russon concludes
with an original interpretation of neurosis as the habits of bodily practice developed in family interactions that
have become the foundation for developed interpersonal life, and proposes a theory of psychological therapy as
the development of philosophical insight that responds to these neurotic compulsions.
