Charles Stewart

Dire Emotions and Lethal Behaviours explores the primary motivational system in human beings. Based on the work of C. G. Jung, James Hillman, Louis Stewart and Silvan Tomkins, Charles Stewart investigates the psychology of the innate affects, with a focus towards the emotional motivation of adolescents and young adults who have killed others, themselves, or both. It is suggested that social isolation, dissociation of the personality, unbearable emotions, and possession by affects are necessary conditions for both homicide and suicide. Stewart argues that these conditions result from deep-seated emotional psychopathology which involves both the positive affects of the life instinct - Interest and Joy, and the crisis affects - Fear, Anguish, Anger, and Shame/Contempt. Illustrated throughout with case studies of individuals who have committed homicide, suicide, or both, Dire Emotions and Lethal Behaviours aims to discover the emotional motivations for such behaviours so that through education and psychological treatment, such tragic outcomes can be prevented. This book will be of interest to professionals and students in the fields of mental health and criminal justice.

This title describes the symbolic process in child's play at each stage from infancy onwards. In addition it shows how particular symbols can facilitate the healing of blocks that may arise in each stage of psychological development. The book is in two parts, In part one, each of the chapters describes a new phase of the symbolic process as it emerges in typical fantasies that accompany a stage of normal development. In part two, each chapter is devoted to the exposition of the particular healing role played by symbols at different stages of development in psychotherapy with infants, children, adolescents and adults.

In present-day Greece many people still speak of exotikNB--mermaids, dog-form creatures, and other monstrous beings similar to those pictured on medieval maps. Challenging the conventional notion that these often malevolent demons belong exclusively to a realm of folklore or superstition separate from Christianity, Charles Stewart looks at beliefs about the exotikNB and the Orthodox Devil to demonstrate the interdependency of doctrinal and local religion. He argues persuasively that students who cling to the timeworn folk/official distinction will find it impossible to appreciate the breadth and coherence of contemporary Greek cosmology. Like the medieval cartographers' fantasies, which were placed on the "edges" of the physical world, Greek demons cluster in marginal locations--outlying streams, wells, and caves. The demons are near enough to the community, however, to attack humans--causing illness or death, according to Stewart's informants. Drawing on an unusual range of sources, from the author's fieldwork on the Cycladic island of Naxos to Orthodox liturgical texts, this book pictures the exotikNB as elements of a Greek cognitive map: figures that enable individuals to navigate the traumas and ambiguities of life. Stewart also examines the social forces that have by turns disposed the Greek people to embrace these demons as indicative of links with the classical past or to eschew them as signs of backwardness and ignorance.