Messy Self

by Jennifer Rosner

Overview

The Messy Self challenges the idea — and the ideal — of a coherent, harmonious self. Taken together, the essays illustrate how a flourishing self is inevitably divided, ambivalent, fractured, messy — and how the self triumphs through disorder. Written in accessible language by award-winning writers and scholars, the book offers a diversity of perspectives on the complexities of the self. With chapters on creativity, love, self-understanding, self-deception, identity, responsibility, and well-being, The Messy Self gives a range of voices to the ordinary and extraordinary divisions, fragmentations, and uncertainties that mark our everyday experience.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781594512926
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	01/15/2007
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

JENNIFER ROSNER is the author of an adult memoir, If a Tree Falls, her story of raising two deaf daughters in a talking family and a hearing world. The Mitten String was inspired by the story of a deaf ancestor whom she discovered in the course of researching her family tree. She has written for The New York Times, Good Housekeeping, The Jewish Daily Forward, and other publications.

Table of Contents

Part I Love and the Messy Self; Chapter 1 A Strange Disorder, Diane Ackerman; Chapter 2 My Tourette’s, Gayle Pemberton; Chapter 3 Conservation, Debra Spark; Chapter 4 The Mommy at the Zoo, Beth Ann Fennelly; Chapter 5 Prologue to Psyche, Jane F. Qrosthwaite; Chapter 6 Psyche in Love, Wendy Wasserstein; Chapter 7 Since You Came, John O’Donohue; Part II Self-Understanding and the Messy Self; Chapter 8 The Clause, C. K. Williams; Chapter 9 The Last Place on Earth, Patricia Foster; Chapter 10 Facing North, Mary Kinzie; Chapter 11 The Fiction of the Self and the Self of Fiction, Rebecca Goldstein; Chapter 12 The Real Story, Liv Pertzoff; Chapter 13 The Envoy, Jane Hirshfield; Part III Self-Deception and the Messy Self; Chapter 14 The Superficial Unity of the Mind, Sarah Buss; Chapter 15 Kidding Ourselves*, Steven Pinker; Chapter 16 Man Alone, Louise Bogan; Part IV Identification and the Messy Self; Chapter 17 The Disappearance, Ilan Stavans; Chapter 18 With Solomon Ibn Gabirol, Richard Chess; Chapter 19 Gifts, Faith Adiele; Chapter 20 Song of the Red Earth, Meena Alexander; Chapter 21 We’re All Colored, Huston Diehl; Part V Well-Being and the Messy Self; Chapter 22 Winnicott on the Surprises of the Self, Martha C. Nussbaum; Chapter 23 Buried, Carol Edelstein; Chapter 24 Legal Selves, Robin West; Part VI Creativity and the Messy Self; Chapter 25 Unimaginative, Corwin Ericson; Chapter 26 The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks; Chapter 27 You …, there …, listening …, Donald Morrill;