"The Bloomsbury Book of the Mind brings together key writings on the mind from all over the world from the earliest recorded accounts to the most up-to-date research, in an assembly of case notes, journals, poetry, fiction and letters as well as more formal writings. Together they represent humanity's most significant attempts to understand the mind and its workings." "Stephen Wilson, a practising psychotherapist, provides introductions to each of the six sections (Perception, Memory, Emotion, Thought, Consciousness, Self) and a linking commentary that sets each extract in the context of its time and in relation to the other pieces around it. His interests range from the big philosophical questions (what is consciousness? is there such a thing as the 'unconscious'?) to the quirkier mysteries of the human mind (the effects of hypnotism, the experience of a phantom limb, or an imaginative cure for sexual impotence)."--BOOK JACKET.