Soul Archaeology

Author: Frankl
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-12-01
Features: In this book, Frankl uses psychoanalytic techniques and perspectives to interpret archaeological discoveries, studies the origins of the human mind, and explores the extraordinary development of the human brain during the Paleolithic era. We learn how our earliest ancestors began to make tools, how culture emerged, and all the information about early humans that the artifacts unearthed by archaeologists reveal: their myths and religious beliefs, their concepts of the world, their labor activities, family relationships, and social organization, etc. Just as individual analysis places great emphasis on early experiences, this book traces the origins of human culture from its inception up to the time before ancient Greek culture. Frankl believes that the most important contribution of psychoanalysis lies not in the profound insights it offers in individual studies, but in the insights it provides in social research. Faced with the overwhelming power of modern science and the pervasive, omnipresent war, such insights are clearly necessary. His fundamental argument is that if we cannot understand the destructive forces that exist in society, even if our planet is not destroyed by them, civilization will inevitably be doomed. Frankl particularly elaborates on the nature of paternal paranoid, a fatal and chronic ailment of human society that has been and remains the root cause of war.