Wisdom and the Senses: The Way of Creativity [Paperback]

Joan M. Erikson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 17, 1991

"In this loving and vivid book, Joan Erikson gives us an artist's retracting of the human life cycle, beginning in the blessings of the senses and fulfilled in wisdom."—Mary Catherine Bateson

Joan Erikson explores the crucial role played by the physical sense at every stage of psychological growth from birth to old age, finding parallels between the creation of art as we usually define it and the creation of self—the most artful act of all. In the experience of making and doing, she located a primary source of human growth and vitality.

Wisdom and the Senses is itself a celebration of art, with the progressive stages in the life cycle revealed through woven charts, reproduced here in full color. The work of artists, much as the words and ideas of Joan Erikson, takes us on a journey of understanding that leads to the meaning of wisdom.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This intelligent, idiosyncratic examination of the intellectual and emotional life cycle enlarges on Erik Erikson's now institutionalized psychological development theory, the basis for his former co-author and wife's present study of art's contribution to the wisdom attributed to old age. Hypothesizing that "creative experience demands of us only that which is genuinely our own . . . our personal, accrued store of sense data," Mrs. Erikson calls upon her fund of knowledge about Eastern and Western philosophy, the creative arts, and the lives of her dedicated artist friends to offer readers with imagination an engaging study of the play between creating and aging. Recommended for general as well as academic collections. Francisca Goldsmith, Golden Gate Univ. Lib., San Francisco
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

Joan Erikson speaks from her long experience as dancer, psychologist, craftswoman, and close observer of children. . . . She has much to teach us about being young and about growing old. She is one of the wise grandmothers of our tribe. (Stephen Mitchell )

A lyrical and informative essay. . . . [Erikson] offers the reader an irresistible invitation to a more holistic vision of what the full range of the imaginative life can include. (Harvey Cox, Harvard University )

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (March 17, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393307107
• ISBN-13: 978-0393307108
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #411,032 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Aha! Scholar and Researcher "Gets It" Visually Via Weaving, March 25, 2001

By 

Kaye Davis (Knoxville, TN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wisdom and the Senses: The Way of Creativity (Hardcover)

Having assisted her husband, Erik Erikson, in the research leading up to the classic psychosocial development conceptual framework, Joan Mowat Erikson assumed she understood its significance. Later, when she invited a weaver to represent the same information using 9 carefully chosen colors -- one for each of the eight stages plus gray for the occasional negative events which occur in each person's life -- she was able to clarify the tension between each crisis's polar outcomes.

Having introduced numerous students through the years to Erikson's theory of psychosocial development, I was excited to meet this author in print and thrilled to see various weavings in color, helping me to understand in greater depth than before.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wisdom and the Senses, September 10, 2010

By 

Adrienne E. Sanderson "Adrienne E. Sanderson" (New Orleans, LA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Wisdom and the Senses: The Way of Creativity (Paperback)

Wisdom and the Senses: The Way of Creativity discusses the many varied aspects of intelligence as measured through a right-brain perspective. Although the rational side is not overlooked, the emphasis is on our spiritual and intuitive guides that reside in each one of us.