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Bret Alderman
Education
Bachelor of Arts, The Evergreen State College, 1992
Doctorate in Depth Psychology, Pacifica Graduate Institute, 2012
Biographical Note
After graduating from Evergreen, I spent 15 years in Mexico, punctuated by trips to work on fishing boats in Alaska. I currently work as a professional freelance translator and editor. I also teach courses on dreams and the roots of human behavior for the Summer Institute for the Gifted.
Publication Type
Non-Fiction
Latest Publication Title
Symptom, Symbol, and the Other of Language: A Jungian Interpretation of the Linguistic Turn, Non-Fiction, Routledge, London
Publication Excerpt
Every statement about language is also a statement by and about psyche. Guided by this primary assumption, and inspired by the works of Carl Jung, in Symptom, Symbol, and the Other of Language, Bret Alderman delves deep into the symbolic and symptomatic dimensions of a deconstructive postmodernism infatuated with semiotics and the workings of linguistic signs.
This book offers an important exploration of linguistic reference and representation through a Jungian understanding of symptom and symbol, using techniques including amplification, dream interpretation, and symbolic attitude. Focusing on Ferdinand de Saussure, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Richard Rorty, Alderman examines the common belief that words and their meaning are grounded purely in language, instead envisioning a symptomatic expression of alienation and collective dissociation. Drawing upon the nascent field of ecopsychology, the modern disciplines of phenomenology and depth psychology, and the ancient knowledge of myth and animistic cosmologies, Alderman dares us to re-imagine some of the more sacrosanct concepts of the contemporary intellectual milieu informed by semiotics and the linguistic turn.
Symptom, Symbol, and the Other of Language is essential reading for academics and students engaged in the study of depth psychology. However, the interdisciplinary approach of the work ensures that it will also be of great interest to those researching and studying in the areas of ethology, ecopsychology, philosophy, linguistics and mythology.
How Did Evergreen Help You in Your Career?
Evergreen taught me how to write! It opened vast landscapes of thought. I will always be thankful for this and every time I return to campus I am reminded of all it gave to me.