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Paranoia and Contentment: A Personal Essay on Western Thought
A hybrid in both content and style, "Paranoia and Contentment" is a bold and original investigation into Western intellectual history. John Hampsey approaches paranoia not as a clinical term for an irrational sense of persecution but from a uniquely positive perspective, as a cultural truth a way of understanding the history of human thought and perhaps the best way to describe Being itself.
Hampsey turns first to the ancient Greeks to explore the origin of the concept of paranoia. "Paranoia" literally "beside the mind" was the Greeks' primarily negative term for thinking outside the usual thought processes, or beyond reason. Working from this classical definition, Hampsey sees paranoia operating in two distinctly different ways. First there is the paranoic, his name for off-track thinking that is expansive, creative, even visionary. This is opposed to the paranoidic, which is motivated by fear, delusion, and a pursuit of contentment so obsessive that it has crippled human imagination and diminished tolerance of those who are perceived to threaten that contentment. The distinction is especially significant because the paranoidic so dominates Western thought and culture that paranoic thinking has become nearly lost to us.
Hampsey seeks to recover this expansive mode of thought by tracing an arc of paranoic moments in Western culture. Abraham, Jesus, Socrates, Hypatia, Joan of Arc, Goethe, Blake, Kierkegaard, Schreber these are only a few among the many figures whom the author examines in order to isolate moments in Western intellectual history when paranoic vision temporarily breaks through the barriers of paranoidic fear. The book's analyses and inquiries are joined by anecdotal interludes in which Hampsey applies the conflicting concepts of paranoic and paranoidic to revealing moments in his own life. As humanly engaging as it is erudite, Paranoia and Contentment seeks to reclaim paranoic thinking as a crucial part of our consciousness and an indispensable component to understanding our cultural history."
Hampsey turns first to the ancient Greeks to explore the origin of the concept of paranoia. "Paranoia" literally "beside the mind" was the Greeks' primarily negative term for thinking outside the usual thought processes, or beyond reason. Working from this classical definition, Hampsey sees paranoia operating in two distinctly different ways. First there is the paranoic, his name for off-track thinking that is expansive, creative, even visionary. This is opposed to the paranoidic, which is motivated by fear, delusion, and a pursuit of contentment so obsessive that it has crippled human imagination and diminished tolerance of those who are perceived to threaten that contentment. The distinction is especially significant because the paranoidic so dominates Western thought and culture that paranoic thinking has become nearly lost to us.
Hampsey seeks to recover this expansive mode of thought by tracing an arc of paranoic moments in Western culture. Abraham, Jesus, Socrates, Hypatia, Joan of Arc, Goethe, Blake, Kierkegaard, Schreber these are only a few among the many figures whom the author examines in order to isolate moments in Western intellectual history when paranoic vision temporarily breaks through the barriers of paranoidic fear. The book's analyses and inquiries are joined by anecdotal interludes in which Hampsey applies the conflicting concepts of paranoic and paranoidic to revealing moments in his own life. As humanly engaging as it is erudite, Paranoia and Contentment seeks to reclaim paranoic thinking as a crucial part of our consciousness and an indispensable component to understanding our cultural history."
256 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2004
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About the author
John C. Hampsey
3 books4 followersJohn C. Hampsey is professor of Romantic and Classical Literature at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, where he has won the University Distinguished Teaching Award. Previously, he taught at Boston University and MIT. He received his BA from Holy Cross College and his PhD from Boston College.
Professor Hampsey's memoir Kaufman's Hill (Bancroft Press, hardcover, January 2015) is set in Pittsburgh between 1961-68. It begins when the narrator is seven years old and focuses on that threshold time between the late 1950s and the full counter-cultural world that arrived after 1968, as well as on the graphic yet mythical world of boyhood that vanishes right into the twilight. Each chapter, in fact, has a key scene occurring at twilight.
Historian Howard Zinn, author of "A People's History of the United States," after reading an early draft of Kaufman's Hill, called it "the best book on American boyhood in decades." Of Kaufman's Hill, another reader says it "touches on something about boyhood within the expansiveness of life that I can't remember anyone doing, especially not with this voice and perspective." Another early reader asserts that "the book captures the dynamics of the lost world of boyhood with sensitivity but without sentimentality, in a way no one has before." "It is an American Angela's Ashes," suggests yet another pre-publication reader.
The Gettysburg Review is publishing an excerpt from Kaufman's Hill in Autumn 2014.
Hampsey's book, Paranoia and Contentment: A Personal Essay on Western Thought (2005, University of Virginia Press) won enthusiastic endorsements from fellow writers Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Tim O'Brien. O'Brien judged Paranoia and Contentment to be "sharply reasoned and intellectually bold . . . This beautifully written book turns upside down our standard thinking about creativity, imagination, and what it is to be wholly human." Paranoia and Contentment was the first book to view paranoia in a positive light, and to use the concept to re-examine Western thought.
Professor Hampsey is currently working on a novel--Soda Lake, an existential mystery mixed with interconnected imaginary portraits. The Alaska Quarterly has recently agreed to publish an excerpt.
During his career, Hampsey has had more than thirty stories and essays published in such places as The Gettysburg Review (four times), The Midwest Quarterly, Antioch Review, The Alaska Quarterly, The Boston Globe, Arizona Quarterly, European Romantic Review, Witness, Colby Quarterly, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and McNeese Review, among many others.
Hampsey was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and now lives in San Luis Obispo, California, with his wife and daughter.
Professor Hampsey's memoir Kaufman's Hill (Bancroft Press, hardcover, January 2015) is set in Pittsburgh between 1961-68. It begins when the narrator is seven years old and focuses on that threshold time between the late 1950s and the full counter-cultural world that arrived after 1968, as well as on the graphic yet mythical world of boyhood that vanishes right into the twilight. Each chapter, in fact, has a key scene occurring at twilight.
Historian Howard Zinn, author of "A People's History of the United States," after reading an early draft of Kaufman's Hill, called it "the best book on American boyhood in decades." Of Kaufman's Hill, another reader says it "touches on something about boyhood within the expansiveness of life that I can't remember anyone doing, especially not with this voice and perspective." Another early reader asserts that "the book captures the dynamics of the lost world of boyhood with sensitivity but without sentimentality, in a way no one has before." "It is an American Angela's Ashes," suggests yet another pre-publication reader.
The Gettysburg Review is publishing an excerpt from Kaufman's Hill in Autumn 2014.
Hampsey's book, Paranoia and Contentment: A Personal Essay on Western Thought (2005, University of Virginia Press) won enthusiastic endorsements from fellow writers Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Tim O'Brien. O'Brien judged Paranoia and Contentment to be "sharply reasoned and intellectually bold . . . This beautifully written book turns upside down our standard thinking about creativity, imagination, and what it is to be wholly human." Paranoia and Contentment was the first book to view paranoia in a positive light, and to use the concept to re-examine Western thought.
Professor Hampsey is currently working on a novel--Soda Lake, an existential mystery mixed with interconnected imaginary portraits. The Alaska Quarterly has recently agreed to publish an excerpt.
During his career, Hampsey has had more than thirty stories and essays published in such places as The Gettysburg Review (four times), The Midwest Quarterly, Antioch Review, The Alaska Quarterly, The Boston Globe, Arizona Quarterly, European Romantic Review, Witness, Colby Quarterly, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and McNeese Review, among many others.
Hampsey was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and now lives in San Luis Obispo, California, with his wife and daughter.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 24, 2025
Profound and inspiring
September 13, 2008
A great mixed-genre presentation; really represents how Hampsey is in person.
November 2, 2009
Written by a college professor of mine, a truly great book. It transcends genres and provides a thoroughly good reads for those who are interested, quite simply in...everything:)
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews