MANKIND IN AMNESIA. [Hardcover]

Immanuel: Velikovsky (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Pan (1999)
• ASIN: B000W2W158
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)

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46 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Perils of Pauline, May 8, 2000

By 

Joseph H Pierre "Joe Pierre" (Salem, OR USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mankind in Amnesia (Hardcover)

Mankind in Amnesia, (Doubleday, New York, 1982) by Immanuel Velikovsky

Dr. Velikovsky gave us the controversial best seller "Worlds in Collision" (1950), and sequels on the same theme including "Ages in Chaos" (1952) and "Earth in upheaval" (1955). "Mankind in Amnesia" is the first of several to be published posthumously and it develops the thesis addressed in his other books, namely the catastrophic history of our planet-so traumatic that the human race has rejected it from memory and refuses to face evidence of it. He postulates near collisions between Earth and Venus and other bodies.

Velikovsky, a Russian-born Jewish psychiatrist, uses his theory to justify a literal reading of the Exodus. The miraculous events (the parting of the Red Sea, manna from Heaven, etc.) he ascribes to natural causes.

He was quite a salesman. Although his formal education, gained throughout Europe, was in medicine, obviously his great interest was astronomy, cosmology, geology and the architectonics of the universe. And his writing has had an impact on those who pursue knowledge in those areas. The late Buckminster Fuller, inventor of the geodesic dome, said of the book, "...an extraordinarily important book, beautifully researched and devastatingly true." Or, so he is quoted on the dust jacket. The late Carl Sagan, on the other hand, calls his approach "shoddy, ignorant and doctrinaire," and strongly implies that his scientific understanding is sadly lacking (Broca's Brain, Random House, N.Y., 1974.)

So, Velikovsky's theories, to put it mildly, are not universally embraced by his peers. Nevertheless, this is a good book. He has a good vocabulary and he uses it enchantingly and persuasively to sell his great idea. It is a book for the literate person who relishes new ideas and fresh approaches to old ones.

Joseph Pierre,
Author of THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS: Our Journey Through Eternity

37 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well Worth Reading, November 20, 2004

By 

The Write Woman (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mankind in Amnesia (Hardcover)

I went to a lot of trouble to locate this book in another town's library. It was well worth the effort.

Velikovsky endured scathing abuse by the scientific community for his unconventional theories merging cosmology, geology, archeology and mythology. Despite his serious research to support his theories, he was proclaimed unqualified to discuss subjects outside his field of medicine.

Well, the ideas set forth in this book cannot be dismissed by similar claims. Velikovsky was, by training, a psychoanalyst trained by a student of Freud, eminently qualifying him to discuss the possibility that our species has repressed the memories of earth-shaking events too terrible and frightening to acknowledge.

It gives one a new perspective on the vicious denunciations of Velikovsky's unorthodox theories by mainstream scientists. Just why did the scientific community find Velikovsky and his ideas so threatening? Read this book and you may wonder if Velikovsky was really onto something.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars To read is to Remember, March 5, 2011

By 

Matthew Goddard (Sierra Nevada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Mankind in Amnesia (Abacus Books) (Paperback)

"The agitation and trepidation preceding global upheavals, the destruction and despair that accompanied them and the horror of possible repetition all caused a variety of reactions, at the base of which was the need to forget, but also the urge to emulate."
- Immanuel Velikovsky

Mankind suffers from traumatic amnesia. This is the result of our ancestors having survived global cataclysms in the past. The planets have made close approaches to each other, and immense interplanetary electrical discharges have wreaked havoc on Earth and other planets. Our ancestors have encoded this (urge to emulate) in mythology, petroglyphs, allegory, and ritual.

Science took a wrong turn 60 some odd years ago when they chose to unscientifically attack, ridicule, and ignore Velikovsky's Magnum Opus- Worlds in Collision. While Velikovsky made some conceptual errors by force fitting astronomical events into certain time-frames, and many question his particular interpretations of mythology, his overlaying idea that electromagnetism plays a far greater role in celestial mechanics than was, or is admitted, has been verified and confirmed. See: Thunderbolts(dot)info

So why hasn't modern Astronomy, Cosmology, and Astrophysics caught on? Why is NASA "baffled" on a regular basis? It may be partially because this "Traumatic Amnesia" is so pervasive and powerful that we collectively deceive ourselves in order to spare ourselves the pain of actually remembering. But of course by denying our past we sabotage our future.... as the only cure offered by Velikovsky to this trauma based amnesia is... Full disclosure.

By recognizing the fact that The Earth has been subject to disasters on a global scale, and that such paroxysms have shaped our collective psyche, is to free oneself from the conceptual "coddling" that underlies modern scientific and indeed collective "civilized" thought. We do not live in a quiet corner of the galaxy. Life in space for Stars, Planets and indeed the beings that inhabit them is precarious and uncertain. Every moment is a gift.

So Velikovsky urges us to remember, for if we do not, we may be doomed to act out and repeat our trauma (as victims often do) in war, and weapons on a mass scale. According to Velikovsky, the stakes are high, and the hour is late. I would tend to agree. He offers this hopeful passage-

"We are in a race with the reaper,we hastened, he tarried, we won. I hope it is not the other way around." - Epilogue

Read this book, read Earth in Upheaval, read Worlds in Collision.
Remember.