Paul Wink

Prima Donna: The Psychology of Maria Callas explores the psychological mechanisms underlying the hypnotic power of Callas's artistry and the unfolding of her tragic life story. Although precipitated by the trauma and shame that followed her abandonment by Aristotle Onassis and the rapid deterioration of her voice, Callas's midlife disintegration reflects deep psychological vulnerabilities. In this book, Wink utilizes cutting-edge advances in research on developmental psychology and narcissism to shed light on Callas's puzzling personal deterioration during the last nine years of her life. Lacking a cohesive and integrated sense of self, Callas sought affirmation and vitality from adoring audiences and older men including her husband Battista Meneghini and her long-term partner Onassis. The propensity to fuse her identity with stage roles contributed to her artistic greatness, but envy and the lack of an intrinsic sense of meaning and worth intensified her vulnerability to life's vicissitudes. Prima Donna is both a powerful study of Callas's life and a contribution to the greater body of work on the psychology of artists.

"In the Course of a Lifetime" provides an unprecedented portrait of the dynamic role religion plays in the everyday experiences of Americans over the course of their lives. The book draws from a unique sixty-year-long study of close to two hundred mostly Protestant and Catholic men and women who were born in the 1920s and interviewed in adolescence, and again in the 1950s, 1970s, 1980s, and late 1990s. Woven throughout with rich, intimate life stories, the book presents and analyzes a wide range of data from this study on the participants' religious and spiritual journeys. A testament to the vibrancy of religion in the United States, "In the Course of a Lifetime" provides an illuminating and sometimes surprising perspective on how individual lives have intersected with cultural change throughout the decades of the twentieth century.