Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology by Paul Radin

This was the last book I've read. I wasn't particularly interested in american Indian mythology, but I was as I still am very interested about the Trickster figure. This is an archetype that continuously appears under different forms in my dreams and because of that I decided to study it more deeply. And to be fair I think this is also a figure which is very present and unconsciously admired in the current Brazilian culture (or should I say in the Brazilian soul to give it a more mystic touch?). Anyway, the trickster is one of the archetypes that appears a lot in the Jungian texts. Its main characteristic is its extreme contradiction between its divine essence and its animal destructive unconscious. This antagonism between destruction and creation is always present in the Trickster image. It is very interesting to see how very old american Indian cultures have tales in which the hero behaves exactly as a Trickster showing all its life cycle and the transformations that happen during his life. The book tells some of these myths and after that the author makes some comments about these cultures and how they related to the myths, where he tries to explain the nature and the meaning of the stories. There are also two extra chapters in the end, one from Karl Kerényi about the Trickster in the Greek mythology, and other from Jung himself about the psychology of the Trickster figure. I quite like books like this one that shows a nice historical account of an psychological pattern (or an archetype) that is still very alive, although many times unconsciously alive, showing indeed that our behavior today is still very much guided by forces which are much older than what we can imagine. I don't know. I simply like to deconstruct the idea that nowadays we do things differently, that we are "modern innovative people creating the future". Well, obviously there are differences, but I don't know exactly to what extend the are just different variations of old patterns or whether they are indeed some new elements that came into life. Anyway, this is a talk for other time. That's all for now.

Inner Work - Using dreams and active imagination for personal growth by Robert A. Jonhson

This was one of the books I most liked reading last year. The author is an Jungian analyst that had lectures with Jung himself. The book explain a lot about analytical psychology and it gives a lot of techniques on how to use it on ourselves. A lot involves active imagination and dream analysis. What I liked most was the dream analysis. On a daily basis I have a very lively memory of my dreams and I can clearly remember the feelings that were involved in each situation of the dream. So this book and all the information and techniques it shows have been very useful to me in order to understand the hidden mechanisms that are operating in my unconscious world. Nowadays I use a lot of the content I find in my dreams even on my nearly daily meditations and it has been priceless because it helps me a lot to guide myself on where to go during the meditation. The book is very well written, it is very clear and even if you don't know to much about analytical psychology this is not a major issue. The author gives a lot of practical examples of dream analysis and active meditations of some of the patients he had and sometimes even of the work he did on himself so that all the theory he explains in the early chapters of the book becomes very tangible and real. I read a few other books of the same author, but this one was by far the best I've seen so far because it sums basically all the theory with very good examples. This is kind of his bible I would say. It is much more complete and useful than his other works. Inner Work is a very good tool for people interested in dealing with its own unconscious mechanisms. I absolutely loved it.

Finnish lessons - What can the world learn from educational change in Finland? by Pasi Sahlberg

I read this book a couple of months ago, and it tells a lot about the current educational system in Finland and how it got to this point. What happened there was something very interesting. A couple of decades ago the Finnishs decided that the educational system should not anymore be based on competition and prize-given for goal-achievers, but rather on cooperation and equality. There was a big change in basically all aspects of the teaching process. Much less homework, much less examinations, much less hours in class, more freedom to chose the learning subjects, no failing mechanisms, flexible times, and better conditions for teachers. Schools became a bit less like a prison, such as they usually are all over the world. But the most interesting thing about it was the results that came over the years. The intention of the changes were more to bring equality to society and to make the educational system more accessible and human. However, surprisingly the result was not only that but also Finnish students started to achieve the highest grades in international examination process. Although that wasn't the goal, the average grade of the Finnish students in international examinations started to achieve levels never achieved before. I think this is really amazing. The changes were better for everybody in all aspects. People were effectively learning more with more freedom. That is all I believe about education. Exams, grades, goal-achieving, prizes, discipline, I think this is all rubbish that brings nothing good to anyone. I really think true education should help the students to learn what they want to learn rather than giving them something you want them to learn and then examining them about that. This Finnish example is a very good thing in this direction. This book itself is sometimes a bit repetitive and it was written quite in an almost academic style (although not to much), but it is a very nice account of what happened and is still happening in Finland. Definitely worth reading if you are interested in educational issues.