Description
Book SynopsisScheibe brings to his reflection on psychology the drama of literature, poetry, philosophy, history, music, and theater. Challenging our dispirited senses, he asks us to take note of the self-representation, performance, and scripts of the drama that is our everyday life.
Trade ReviewDarning the wardrobes of our unwitting psyches with glittering threads of enlightenment, while sparing the pierce of a clinical needle,
The Drama of Everyday Life intelligently illuminates the cast of characters who roam the arena of our world, engaged in the theater of life...The product of an unsettling sense of emptiness in the real and apparent success of traditional psychology as a science and profession.
Everyday Life presents the 'dramaturgical approach' to psychology, one which identifies the writhing force which struggles to exalt our lives from mundane to magical. Both a psychotherapist in private practice and a professor at Wesleyan University, Scheibe calls for a form of 'quotidian psychology,' one which lowers the mask of traditional psychology, to reveal the faces of the players beneath and study the scripts of their commonplace lives in order to comprehend the drama life affords. -- Karen A. Wyckoff * Forewordmagazine.com *
Karl Scheibe's entertaining book is a reaffirmation of one of the most powerful alternative ways of looking at human affairs: from the dramaturgical point of view...[Scheibe] describes and makes use of an image of the world as a dramatic performance...A fascinating and subtle book. -- Rom Harré * Science *
It is rare for psychologists to address a general audience in a book that is intelligently written and accessible and still rigorous enough to be thought provoking.
The Drama of Everyday Life is one of the exceptions, and even if one disagrees with its theoretical perspective, it is well worth reading for its clear, acerbic insights, which are free of any hint of psychobabble...As a paragon of independent thinking, Scheibe is hard to beat. Psychology will be the richer if young professionals learned uncompromising skepticism from his example. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi * Contemporary Psychology--APA Review of Books *
The Drama of Everyday Life, written by psychologist Karl E. Scheibe, provides rich food for thought for the drama educator. -- Mallika Henry * Research in Drama Education *
Table of ContentsPreface 1. A Quotidian Psychology 2. Seriousness 3. Indifference 4. Boredom 5. Cosmetics and Costumes 6. Fear and Greed 7. Too Much Plenty 8. Eating and Sex 9. While We Were Dancing 10. Gambling 11. The Disappearance of Schizophrenia 12. Drama in the Classroom 13. For and Against Piety 14. The Giving of Gifts 15. The Question of Authenticity Reprise Notes References Credits Acknowledgments Index
