Search results for ""Author Colin Wilson""

A Fascinating Look into the Psychology of Serial Killers and the Men Who Hunt Them DownColin Wilson opens this illuminating psychological discussion with the development of the 1977 Behavioral Science Unit at the FBI, which was set up in order to answer the many questions surrounding serial killers:• How does someone become a serial killer?• How do they choose their victims?• Why do they not feel remorse?• How are they caught?Wilson interviews FBI Special Agent Robert Ressler, coiner of the term “serial killer” and one of the pioneers of criminal profiling, as well as Ted Bundy and Charles Manson in order to figure out the motives behind their grisly actions.In Hunting Serial Killers, by tracking the BSU’s development of psychological profiling and genetic fingerprinting, Wilson reveals the forensic investigations that caused the seizure and arrest of some of the most vile and villainous peo

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Colin Wilson's great classic work is a comprehensive history of mystery and magic. His genius lies in producing a skilful synthesis of the available material; clarifying without simplifying, seeing the occult in the light of reason and reason in the light of the mystical and paranormal. It is a journey of enlightenment – a wide-ranging survey of the whole subject and an insightful exploration of Man's latent powers. Republished two years after the author's death and with a new foreword by bibliographer Colin Stanley, Wilson brings his own refreshingly optimistic and stimulating interpretation to the worlds of the paranormal, the occult and the supernatural. The Occult is the most interesting, informative and thought-provoking book on the subject I have read Sunday Telegraph

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The classic study of alienation, creativity and the modern mind'Excitingly written, with a sense of revelation' GUARDIANTHE OUTSIDER was an instant literary sensation when it was first published in 1956, thrusting its youthful author into the front rank of contemporary writers and thinkers. Wilson rationalised the psychological dislocation so characteristic of Western creative thinking into a coherent theory of alienation, and defined those affected by it as a type: the outsider. Through the works and lives of various artists, including Kafka, Camus, Hemingway, Hesse, Lawrence, Van Gogh, Shaw, Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, Wilson explored the psyche of the outsider, his effect on society and society's on him. Nothing that has happened in the decades since has made THE OUTSIDER any less relevant; it remains the seminal work on this most persistent of modern-day preoccupations.

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El apasionante recorrido por la historia de la humanidad que nos propone LO OCULTO destaca por su inusual punto de partida: el estudio del poder de la mente y sus efectos "paranormales".A través de un ameno relato sobre la vida de renombrados personajes del mundo del ocultismo como John Dee, Dion Fortune, Cagliostro, Aleister Crowley, Agripa, Rasputín y muchos otros, o de individuos menos famosos pero con una trayectoria igualmente sorprendente en el campo de los "espíritus", Colin Wilson nos expone su teoría de la "Facultad X", una propiedad mental innata que resulta fundamental para la experiencia poética y mística, tal como demuestra la obra de literatos como Robert Graves o Goethe.Se trata, sencillamente, de la potencial capacidad humana de trascender el presente, de percibir la existencia de otros lugares y otros tiempos, aunque el hombre no ha comprendido aún que su propia consciencia le ofrece todas las herramientas para actuar sobre la realidad y transformarla; ignora que

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A collection of the most shocking, horrifying accounts of true crime ever.Evil knows no boundaries. In 1614, Hungarian countess Elizabeth Báthory died, sealed in a tiny closet in her castle. Her crimes? She was rumored to have bathed in the blood of her victims, which may have numbered in the hundreds. More recently, Russia’s Andrei Chikatilo, the United States’ Ted Bundy, and Great Britain’s Peter Sutcliffe added to the horrors humans inflict upon their fellow man. Featuring maps, callouts, and facts that follow these criminals’ trails of crime, Evil is a groundbreaking volume. It explores some of the most famous crime cases of real-life murder and mayhem.In this epic account of history’s most infamous murder cases, leading true-crime researcher and writer Colin Wilson teams up with his son Damon Wilson to masterfully recount the shocking details of more than sixty cases of murder and mayhem. Illustrated with hundreds of color and black-and-white photos, Evil features images of criminals, forensic evidence, and key personalities and places that put each crime in historical context.In a continuing search for the meaning in murder, the Wilsons create one of the definitive books in the field of criminology.

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As the number of serial killers worldwide has risen steadily - from the emergence of Jack the Ripper in 1888 to Harold Shipman and Ivan Milat, the backpacker killer of the Australian outback - the need to understand mass murder is becoming more urgent. Using privileged access to the world's first National Centre for the Analysis of Violent Crime, Colin Wilson and Donald Seaman bring you this incisive study of the psychology of serial killers and the motives behind their crimes. From childhood traumas to issues of frustration, fear and fantasy, discover what turns an ordinary human being into a compulsive killer.

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The best of Colin Wilson in one fantastic volume. Containing extracts from Wilson's work on existentialism, criminology, psychology and the occult, this is an invaluable introduction to one of the late twentieth-century's most incisive thinkers. This is a new edition of the classic Colin Wilson collection The Essential Colin Wilson (first published in 1985), updated and introduced by Wilson's bibliographer Colin Stanley. It is the only book to contain extracts from Colin Wilson's most important work in one volume, including The Outsider (1956), A Criminal History of Mankind (1983), The New Existentialism (1966), The Occult (1971), New Pathways in Psychology (1972) and Mysteries (1978), as well as three of his novels and many other texts. Subjects covered include existentialism, criminology, psychology, consciousness studies, the occult and much more. This second edition includes all of the original volume plus six essential post-1985 essays and chapters chosen by Stanley and other Colin Wilson experts including Gary Lachman. These essays provide a much needed update covering aspects of Wilson's work from the 28 years that followed the publication of the first edition to his death in December 2013. This is an invaluable introduction for those approaching one of the late twentieth century's most incisive thinkers for the first time and also a timely reminder, to Colin Wilson's many fans and scholars worldwide, of a unique and challenging body of work.

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Jealousy, revenge and lust are among the oldest motives for murder. When passions run high, spurned lovers can act without a thought for the consequence. All it takes is a kitchen knife, a heavy object from the mantelpiece or a gun from the bedside cabinet..."Crimes of Passion" chronicles over 150 emotionally charged cases in which the heart ruled the head, invariably with fatal consequence. Some are spur-of-the-moment rages from betrayed partners that have elicited sympathy from judge and jury; others are more carefully planned acts of revenge and spite that have shown and received no mercy. "Crimes of Passion" covers cases form all over the world including Thompson and Bywaters, Snyder and Gray, Ruth Ellis, Howard Jacobson, Lorena Bobbitt, Susan Smith, Jane Andrews, Bertrand Cantat and Scott Peterson. The result is a chilling and compelling insight into the tortured minds of some of crime's most infamous characters.

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Creatively and intellectually there is no other species that has ever come close to equalling humanity’s achievements, but nor is any other species as suicidally prone to internecine conflict. We are the only species on the planet whose ingrained habit of conflict constitutes the chief threat to our own survival. Human history can be seen as a catalogue of cold-hearted murders, mindless blood-feuds, appalling massacres and devastating wars, but, with developments in forensic science and modern psychology, and with raised education levels throughout the world, might it soon be possible to reign in humanity’s homicidal habits? Falling violent crime statistics in every part of the world seem to indicate that something along those lines might indeed be happening. Colin and Damon Wilson, who between them have been covering the field of criminology for over fifty years, offer an analysis of the overall spectrum of human violence. They consider whether human beings are in reality as cruel and violent as is generally believed and they explore the possibility that humankind is on the verge of a fundamental change: that we are about to become truly civilised. As well as offering an overview of violence throughout our history – from the first hominids to the twenty-first century, touching on key moments of change and also indicating where things have not changed since the Stone Age – they explore the latest psychological, forensic and social attempts to understand and curb modern human violence. To begin with, they examine questions such as: Were the first humans cannibalistic? Did the birth of civilisation also lead to the invention of war and slavery? Priests and kings brought social stability, but were they also the instigators of the first mass murders? Is it in fact wealth that is the ultimate weapon? They look at slavery and ancient Roman sadism, but also the possibility that our own distaste for pain and cruelty is no more than a social construct. They show how the humanitarian ideas of the great religious innovators all too quickly became distorted by organised religious structures. The book ranges widely, from fifteenth-century Baron Gilles de Rais, ‘Bluebeard’, the first known and possibly most prolific serial killer in history, to Victorian domestic murder and the invention of psychiatry and Sherlock Holmes and the invention of forensic science; from the fifteenth-century Taiping Rebellion in China, in which up to 36 million died to the First and Second World Wars and more recent genocides and instances of ‘ethnic cleansing’, and contemporary terrorism. They conclude by assessing the very real possibility that the internet and the greater freedom of information it has brought is leading, gradually, to a profoundly more civilised world than at any time in the past.

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Almost two decades after writing his famous The Occult, Colin Wilson re-examined the whole spectrum of the mystical and paranormal, producing a general occult theory that remains as compelling as the evidence of atomic particles. Originally published in 1988, Beyond the Occult contains a huge amount of new material and evidence, which came to light following publication of The Occult. It combines scientific thinking on the nature of physical reality with a wide range of fascinating case studies, from the Swiss dowser who located the body of a missing woman to the lucky American whose dreams foretold the winning horses in multiple races to scores of accounts of mystical experiences of the Divine, of spirit possession and of poltergeists. Part One covers the amazing hidden powers of the human mind: ESP, clairvoyance, psychometry, precognition, psychokinesis, and dowsing. Part Two considers the more mysterious forces for good or evil – poltergeists, spirit possession, and reincarnation – that convinced Colin Wilson of the reality of disembodied spirits. In Beyond the Occult, Colin Wilson puts forward a convincing case that our so-called 'normal' experience may, in fact, be subnormal, and that evolution may have brought us near the edge of a quantum leap into a hugely expanded human consciousness. This new edition includes a foreword by Colin Wilson's biographer, Colin Stanley.

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When Colin Wilson died in December 2013, one perceptive obituary writer suggested that, despite the seemingly diverse subject matter of his books, Wilson's legacy lay in the field of consciousness studies. This is undoubtedly true. In Super Consciousness (first published in 2009), Wilson, nearing the end of his creative life, decided to succinctly summarise the ideas he had developed during years of research first as an existentialist philosopher and a psychologist, and later as an explorer of the occult. In the Foreword Wilson states: “I am now 75, and most of my life has been devoted to a search for what might be called ‘the mechanisms of the Peak Experience’, or ‘power consciousness’. This book might be regarded as a kind of DIY manual of how to achieve it.” Peak Experience – the experience of sudden overwhelming happiness – is a concept coined by the American psychologist Abraham Maslow (1908–1970), but while Maslow believed that Peak Experience could not be induced, Wilson thought otherwise. He points out that boredom and lack of purpose are among the most destructive states we can experience, and instead emphasises the importance of acknowledging the reality of free will and actively evolving our own consciousness to find deep meaning and joy in every part of life. In this fascinating and optimistic work, Wilson looks at what we can learn from the Peak Experiences of Yeats, Blake, Sartre, Nietzsche, Robert Graves and other luminaries, revealing the process of how we too can gain incredible insight into the deepest mysteries of existence. This new edition includes a foreword by Colin Wilson's bibliographer, Colin Stanley.

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-- What is consciousness like?-- How can consciousness be achieved?Gary Lachman argues that consciousness is not a result of neurons and molecules, but is actually responsible for them. Meaning, he proposes, is not imported from the outer world, but rather creates the world.He shows that consciouness is a living, evolving presence whose development can be traced through different historical periods. Concentrating on the late nineteenth-century onwards, Lachman exposes the 'secret history' of consciousness through thinkers such as P. D. Ouspensky, Rudolf Steiner, and Colin Wilson, as well as more mainstream philosophers like Henri Bergson, William James, Owen Barfield and psychologist Andreas Mavromatis.Two little known but important thinkers play a major role in Lachman’s argument: Jurij Moskvitin, who showed how our consciousness relates to the mechanisms of perception and to the external world; and Jean Gebster, who presented perhaps the most impressive case for the evolution of consciousness.This is a far-reaching book from an exciting contemporary thinker.

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THE ULTIMATE 2000 AD MIX-TAPE HAS ARRIVED! Best of 2000 AD is a landmark series from the cult comic, bursting with our greatest stories for a new generation of readers. Every Best of 2000 AD contains a mix of modern classics and gems from the vault. In each edition you'll find an explosive new Judge Dredd adventure, fresh essays by prominent popular culture writers, a graphic novel-length feature presentation by global legends and a vintage Dredd case. In this volume: Judge Dredd hunts untraceable assassins firing Magic Bullets by Al Ewing and Colin Wilson; even robots get the Red Planet Blues from Alan Moore, Steve Dillon and John Higgins; not even Mega City One’s brightest can escape The Vampire Effect; join the front line of the resistance against intergalactic bigots in Gothic masterpiece Nemesis The Warlock! Boasting brand new covers from an all-star line-up of artists including Becky Cloonan (The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys) and Charlie Adlard (The Walking Dead) with designer Tom Muller (X-Men), Best of 2000 AD is the essential gateway into the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic.

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