EBOOK
The Soul of Desire
Discovering the Neuroscience of Longing, Beauty, and Community
Curt Thompson, M. D.4.7
(11)
About
We are people of desire.
In The Soul of Desire, psychiatrist Curt Thompson suggests that underneath all our longings is the desire to be known and what's more, that this fundamental yearning manifests itself in our deep need to make things of beauty, revealing, who we are to others. Desire and beauty go hand in hand.
But both our craving to be known and our ability to create beauty have been marred by trauma and shame, collapsing our imagination for what God has for us and blinding us to the possibility that beauty could ever emerge from our ashes. Drawing on his work in interpersonal neurobiology and clinical practice, Thompson presents a powerful picture of the capacity of the believing community to reshape our imaginations, hold our desires and griefs together, and invite us into the beauty of God’s presence.
The Soul of Desire is a mature, creative work, weaving together neuroscience and spiritual formation to open up new horizons for thinking not only about the nature of the mind, but about what it means to be human.
In The Soul of Desire, psychiatrist Curt Thompson suggests that underneath all our longings is the desire to be known and what's more, that this fundamental yearning manifests itself in our deep need to make things of beauty, revealing, who we are to others. Desire and beauty go hand in hand.
But both our craving to be known and our ability to create beauty have been marred by trauma and shame, collapsing our imagination for what God has for us and blinding us to the possibility that beauty could ever emerge from our ashes. Drawing on his work in interpersonal neurobiology and clinical practice, Thompson presents a powerful picture of the capacity of the believing community to reshape our imaginations, hold our desires and griefs together, and invite us into the beauty of God’s presence.
The Soul of Desire is a mature, creative work, weaving together neuroscience and spiritual formation to open up new horizons for thinking not only about the nature of the mind, but about what it means to be human.
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Reviews
"This is an extraordinary testimony to the power of beauty in a broken and fragmented world. It is extraordinary not simply because of its unusually direct and winsome style, but because of what the author brings to his theme: a professional expertise in neurobiology. More than a testimony, it is also an invitation: to have our deepest desire set alight, our desire for the One from whom all beauty springs."
Jeremy Begbie, Duke University
"Curt Thompson's previous work on shame has been life-transforming for numerous readers. Here he continues his interdisciplinary exploration of one of the elemental human experiences that founds our sense of self-the desire to see and to share beauty. Disarmingly self-disclosing, deeply in touch with Scripture and classic Christian sources, and engagingly conversant with the advances and insights of current neuroscientific research, this book beckons us to a deeper, healing knowledge of ourselves and, ultimately, of God."
Wesley Hill, associate professor of New Testament at Western Theological Seminary