Revisiting Jonestown: An Interdisciplinary Study of Cults

Author:   Domenico Arturo Nesci ,  Nancy McWilliams
Publisher:   Lexington Books
ISBN:  

9781498552691


Pages:   178
Publication Date:   13 December 2017
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   Manufactured on demand   Availability explained
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Revisiting Jonestown: An Interdisciplinary Study of Cults


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Overview

Revisiting Jonestown covers three main topics: the psycho-biography of Jim Jones (the leader of the suicidal community) from the new perspective of Prenatal Psychology and transgenerational trauma, the story of his Peoples Temple, with emphasis on what kind of leadership and membership were responsible for their tragic end, and the interpretation of death rituals by religious cults as regression to primordial stages of human evolution, when a series of genetic mutations changed the destiny of Homo Sapiens, at the dawn of religion and human awareness. A pattern of collective suicide is finally identified, making it possible to foresee and try to prevent its tragic repetition. At the same time, through an artistic editorial work on original images from the Peoples Temple files, a sort of Multimedia Psychotherapy is subliminally delivered in order to help the mourning of the victims of Jonestown, to whose memory the book is dedicated.

Full Product Details

Author:   Domenico Arturo Nesci ,  Nancy McWilliams
Publisher:   Lexington Books
Imprint:   Lexington Books
Dimensions:   Width: 15.80cm , Height: 1.90cm , Length: 23.80cm
Weight:   0.440kg
ISBN:  

9781498552691


ISBN 10:   1498552692
Pages:   178
Publication Date:   13 December 2017
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand   Availability explained
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Jim Jones: Psychobiography of a Cult Leader Chapter 2: Peoples Temple and Placental Leadership Chapter 3: Peoples Temple and Syncytial Membership Chapter 4: From Miracles and Exoduses to the White Night Chapter 5: Interdisciplinary Reflections Chapter 6: The Death Ritual of Jonestown Chapter 7: Fractals

Reviews

Revisiting Jonestown is an outstanding book on the life and death of Peoples Temple, a religious cult that Dr. Nesci has been studying throughout his life. The book is a captivating narrative, blending the facts of the story of Jim Jones and his followers with theoretical reflections on the meaning of cults, explaining how and why they are exposed to the risk of violent, destructive (and self-destructive) behaviors. To solve the riddle of Jonestown, Dr. Nesci developed new theories on the dawn of human awareness, the origins of religions, and the relationships between different death rituals of Homo Sapiens: collective suicide, genocide, and war. I am sure that the next decades will see a vibrant scientific debate on these new interdisciplinary ideas, as well as on the changes in perspective that they will inevitably bring to different fields: psychology, anthropology, sociology, political science, women studies, history, religion, and so on... As a psychiatrist, I think that this essay will open new horizons in our way of conceiving psychopathology and practicing psychotherapy with destructive (and self-destructive) patients. I strongly recommend this book to all graduate students in the Humanities and in Medicine (especially in psychiatry, criminology, and forensic psychology) as well as to all lay (but cultivated) readers who are concerned with understanding cult mentality. -- Robert O. Pasnau, MD, University of California, Los Angeles, emeritus As a psycho-historian and prenatal psychologist, I can confirm the high quality of the theoretical background of this book on Jonestown by Domenico A. Nesci, who devoted many years of research to collect documents from Peoples Temple and find some meaning to their poison ordeal. His analysis of the death ritual of Jonestown opens up new levels of understanding of the unconscious dynamics in large groups, linking collective suicide to genocide and war. This book is going to become a great tool for its Readers, and allow them to grasp new insights even on some uncanny political processes of our time. -- Ludwig Janus, MD, Psychoanalytic Training Institute


Author Information

Domenico A. Nesci, MD, is professor of community psychology at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, president of the International Institute for Psychoanalytic Research and Training of Health Professionals (IIPRTHP), vice president of DREAMS onlus, and co-director of the Scuola Internazionale di Psicoterapia nel Setting Istituzionale (SIPSI).

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