New Books in Psychoanalysis2 Jun 2020

Brian Greene, "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe" (Random House, 2020)

Brian Greene is a Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Columbia University in the City of New York, where he is the Director of the Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics, and co-founder and chair of the World Science Festival. He is well known for his TV mini-series about string theory and the nature of reality, including the Elegant Universe, which tied in with his best-selling 2000 book of the same name. In this episode, we talk about his latest popular book Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe (Random House, 2020)

Until the End of Time gives the reader a theory of everything, both in the sense of a “state of the academic union”, covering cosmology and evolution, consciousness and computation, and art and religion, and in the sense of showing us a way to apprehend the often existentially challenging subject matter. Greene uses evocative autobiographical vignettes in the book to personalize his famously lucid and accessible explanations, and we discuss these episodes further in the interview. Greene also reiterates his arguments for embedding a form of spiritual reverie within the multiple naturalistic descriptions of reality that different areas of human knowledge have so far produced.

John Weston is a University Teacher of English in the Language Centre at Aalto University, Finland. His research focuses on academic communication. He can be reached at john.weston@aalto.fi and @johnwphd.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(420)

Ryan Engley, "Seriality: Media and the Psychic Form of Everyday Life" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

This material and theoretical history of seriality shows it to be the dominant form of culture since its inception within 19th-century print culture, as both a media structure and a psychic one. The...

23 Aug 1h 24min

Mark Solms, "The Only Cure: Freud and the Neuroscience of Mental Healing" (Pegasus, 2026)

Once dismissed as unscientific, psychoanalytic therapy is proving to be among our most effective medical treatments of any kind - outperforming psychiatric drugs and rivaling vaccines in its power to ...

14 Aug 1h 8min

Todd McGowan, "Self-Sabotage: How We Try Not to Flourish" (Polity Press, 2026)

Self-Sabotage: How We Try Not to Flourish (Polity Press, 2026) contends that an unconscious impulse to undermine our own interests plays a dominant role in our lives. The idea of a primary drive to ...

25 Jul 1h 10min

Barbara Holifield, "Being with the Body in Depth Psychology: Development, Trauma, and Transformation in the Unspoken Realm" (Routledge, 2024)

Being with the Body in Depth Psychology: Development, Trauma, and Transformation in the Unspoken Realm (Routledge, 2024), featuring a foreword by Donald Kalsched, examines the integration of the subj...

24 Jul 59min

M. Guy Thompson, "Existential Psychoanalysis: A Contemporary Introduction" (Routledge, 2025)

A fascinating introductory volume, Existential Psychoanalysis: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge, 2025) integrates existential philosophy with psychoanalysis, drawing on key theorists from both ...

11 Jul 53min

Psychoanalysis and Jewish Languages

There is an academic interest in the "Jewish Freud," aiming to detect Jewish influences on Freud, his own feelings about being Jewish, and suppressed traces of Jewishness in his thought. This book tak...

8 Jul 58min

Nyck Walsh, "Neurodivergent Somatics in Therapy: An Anti-Oppressive Model for Whole Person Care" (Norton, 2026)

A new paradigm that honors the wisdom and wholeness of neurodivergent clients. Focusing on autism and what is medically known as ADHD, neurodivergent author Nyck Walsh takes readers on an anti-oppress...

5 Jul 58min

Arpan Roy, "Relative Strangers: Romani Kinship and Palestinian Difference" (U Toronto Press, 2025)

Examining how memory, intergenerational transmission, and kinship work together, Relative Strangers: Romani Kinship and Palestinian Difference (U Toronto Press, 2025) sheds light on Romani life in P...

1 Jul 58min