Books about Myth breaking from Amazon.com

Breaking the Magic Spell, first published in 1979, is considered a landmark of the field, and this revised, expanded, and updated edition will be invaluable to scholars and students.

Folk and fairy tales pervade the everyday world to such a degree that we are sometimes unaware of their enormous influence on our behavior. In seven essays collected in Breaking the Magic Spell, Zipes discusses historically and critically the evolution of folk tales as fairy tales, their influence on popular beliefs, the politics behind them, and the way they are used in mass media culture today. Zipes looks at how a wide range of authors, including the Brothers Grimm, Perrault, the German romantics, Hans Christian Andersen, Wilde, and Tolkien, used fairy tales as he assesses their enduring importance..
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Even as healthcare technology makes great strides, studies show that the attitude of a person suffering from chronic illness may hold the most sway over the healing process. This book shows that the first step in adopting a positive attitude toward health lies in dismissing harmful myths. "I must forgive before I can heal." "I am sick because God is punishing me." "If it doesn't feel good, it must be an effective medicine." These are outdated concepts that can slow healing -- or make an illness worse. Donald Epstein divides these myths into four categories: social, biomedical, religious/spiritual, and New Age. He discusses each myth individually -- from "healing is expensive" to "every condition can be traced to a demonstrable physical cause" -- and offers replacement myths, or "Healing Magic," to be both meditated upon and declared out loud by the reader in order to create an opportunity for healing..
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In the ongoing drama of family life, children often assume, or are assigned, roles based on their parents' unspoken needs, fears, or desires Drawing on classical myths, fairy tales, and the writings of R. D. Laing, Freud, and other experts in family dynamics, as well as case studies of her own patients, Joyce Block shows us how our childhood labels -- be it the Family Brain, the Wild Child, the Ne'er-Do-Well, or the Prodigal Son -- influence our behavior as adults. Block explores how and why our families unconsciously construct identities for us, which then shape our images of who we are and what we are destined to become.

From the Beauty who can only find love with a Beast, to Pandora, whose life is steeped in trouble, Block's portraits reveal the roots of our identities and offer insights into how the" magical" spell can be broken. These personal myths need not continue to limit our potential and cast a shadow over relationships with our parents, mates, children, and friends. Family Myths is an invaluable guide to breaking the spell that keeps us frozen in time and to reviving the real self that is hibernating within..
Price: $1.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

As a psychotherapist, parent educator and parent coach, Alyson Schäfer has worked with a great many mothers who, in the quest to be a "good mother" have ended up on the door step of despair Alyson is a forty-something, suburbanite, working-mother of two and can speak to these issues both personally and professionally

This book explains the psycho-social phenomena of how each person creates their own unique "good mother myth" and then examines why these myths are not only faulty, but could in fact lead to poor parenting, marital disaster and individual crisis. Her years of educating parents around these concepts afford Alyson the skill to take complex ideas and explain them to a lay audience in a compelling and easy to understand way.

Capitalizing on the need to present parents with information in an easy to digest format, the book is presented as a series of personal stories, each highlighting a common parenting myth. This format will appeal to tired parents who have little time and energy for "academia". Instead, readers learn by taking a voyeuristic peek into the private family lives of the book's characters. Readers can identify with the fictitious parents and coaching clients in the stories and see first hand how the characters ’ life experiences shaped their unique "good mother myths" and how these myths create conflict in their lives.

The author offers up ideas for how the character can reject her current thinking and adopt a more useful outlook to improve her situation. The story arc allows readers to identify and then project how their parenting may be unknowingly going off the rails.

The goal of this book is to provide parents with some basic education and a means of self-discovery. Readers uncover their own good mother myths and are given an eye-opening glimpse into potential issues to challenge their thinking. A great sense of empowerment is restored as mothers become better able to resist the pulls of their personal and cultural myths, and instead begin parenting with greater intention and in ways that are more suitable to proper child guidance..
Price: $3.98 [Notify me when price goes down.]