The Machinery of the MindViolet Mary Firth, also known as Dion Fortune, explores how our minds operate and interact with visual and other stimuli. To detail her subject, Firth draws upon both her immense understanding of the brain's workings in the scientific schema, as well as through her affiliation with occult spiritualism and realms beyond our own. This multi-faceted approach, together with the author's lively and engaging style, makes for an excellent primer upon human perceptions, and the upper and lower functions of mind. Other subjects of interest include the response of the mind to scenarios demanding instinctive reaction, its sexual and reproductive impulses, its ability to dissociate itself from reality, and the various characteristics of dreams. Treatments of the early 20th century - Firth originally published this work in 1922 - range from hypnosis, psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, and the use of suggestion and autosuggestion upon patients. Although Firth's book is essentially a collection which merely touches upon various expansive explanations and ideas in the mental disciplines, she does an astonishingly good job at summarizing complex concepts in a mere few paragraphs. The author's youth was spent acquiring a degree in psychology and psychoanalysis at the University of London, while her adulthood was characterized by successive spiritual revelations, a regular output of occultist material, and membership of the Theosophic Society. |
