Feet Of Clay: The Power and Charisma of Gurus, by Anthony Storr
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Feet Of Clay: The Power and Charisma of Gurus, by Anthony Storr
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How do gurus get their power? Gurus are extraordinary individuals who attract fanatical followers and wield incredible and at times destructive control over them. In this remarkable study, Anthony Storr, the acclaimed author of Solitude and Music and the Mind, examines why we are so enthralled with these dogmatic figures who satisfy our need for certainty. Taking as his examples such diverse figures as Jesus, Sigmund Freud, Ignatius Loyola, and David Koresh, Storr traces the typical patterns—often involving psychotic illness—that shape the guru’s development, and reveals how certain gurus become monsters while others become spiritual beacons.
Feet Of Clay: The Power and Charisma of Gurus, by Anthony Storr- Amazon Sales Rank: #680608 in eBooks
- Published on: 2015-05-19
- Released on: 2015-05-19
- Format: Kindle eBook
Amazon.com Review Every generation has its charismatic spiritual leaders, its gurus. Some are true saints while others conceal unspeakable depravity. Anthony Storr, Oxford professor of psychiatry, analyzes an interesting array of gurus and finds many commonalities among them--an isolated childhood, a need for certainty, a demand for obedience. He also elucidates aspects of this psychological profile in various intellectual, artistic, and political figures of history. This eye-opening book invokes a larger issue: in our search for guidance and truth, when and why do we cross the line from reasoned inquirer to unquestioning follower?
From Publishers Weekly "The wisest men follow their own direction and listen to no prophet guiding them," wrote Euripedes. Storr (Music and the Mind), a psychiatrist, uses this ancient caution as the epigraph to a fascinating yet frustrating investigation into the appeal of guru figures. He analyzes the lives and works of the destructive, unbalanced cult leaders Jim Jones and David Koresh, and he uses their symptoms?isolation, narcissism, paranoid delusion?to take the measure of other, generally more respected, "gurus," including Gurdjieff, Freud, Jung, Rudolf Steiner, Rajneesh, St. Ignatius, even Jesus. While insisting that none of these latter can be described as insane, Storr considers their authoritarian certainty an ominous sign. Stressing that there can be a charisma based on goodness and genuine devotion to truth rather than on the power of personality, Storr warns against teachers who claim to know what he judges no single person can know: "No one knows in the sense that Gurdjieff or Rajneesh or Jung believed that they knew and were supposed to know by their disciples." But Storr's elegantly written account is tarnished by his own unacknowledged authoritarianism. He never entertains the notion that there may be states of consciousness?states of knowing?that exceed customary bounds, so that a strange cosmology like Gurdjieff's might be understood not as a paranoid delusion or mere belief, but as a challenge to habitual modes of perception and cogitation that is composed with a clockmaker's care. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal Storr (Music and the Mind, LJ 10/15/92), a former lecturer in clinical psychiatry at Oxford University, considers the minds, motives, and missions of seven influential thinkers: Freud, Jung, Rudolf Steiner, Gurdjieff, Bhagwan Rajneesh, Ignatius of Loyola, and Jesus of Nazareth. True to his training, Storr closely considers the family background; transcending clinical psychiatry, he finds meaning in the message of each thinker. Storr's earlier Solitude (LJ 8/88) showed how artists such as Beatrix Potter, Beethoven, and Kafka found stability and truth in their work despite disconnection from other humans; Feet of Clay, in contrast, shows how "gurus" depend upon other humans for devotion and obedience. The title, however, is somewhat misleading, since Storr finds a core of value and truth in even those (e.g., Gurdjieff) whom he labels "confidence tricksters" and those (e.g., Rajneesh) who eventually rotted from adulation and drugs. Storr's work is a rich, thoughtful, well-documented, and accessible work, easily recommended for most academic and larger public libraries.?Bill Piekarski, Southwestern Coll. Lib., Chula Vista, Cal.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most helpful customer reviews
34 of 37 people found the following review helpful. A sane overview By Anthony L Don't overlook this book--this is one of the finest overviews of the wide range of gurus in history and what they had in common. Disentangling the psychological influences on the guru and the follower is a very difficult trick, and Storr's illuminating review not only draws very clear pictures of the lives and work of many of these figures, but adds several chapters at the end which beautifully analyze in a dispassionate and tolerant spirit the sense and the absurdity in the ideas of both the gurus and their followers. Since we all have the drives which energize this arena it is a public service to elucidate what is happening with the clarity and perspective that Storr achieves. It should be a enormous help to anybody researching the field and a solace to anybody caught in it and trying to escape confusion. A fascinating topic brightly illuminated.
54 of 62 people found the following review helpful. A Close Look at the Spiritual Gurus By Burak Kilic I do not agree with the other reviewer's comments; I think Starr does quite a thorough analysis of the 'gurus', whom he has chosen from a large scope of times and nations. I agree that it is not very scholarly; and furthermore it has a 'conversating' atmosphere to it. But I personally like it that way. It's clear and intelligible. Why make it seem profound, for the sake of looking more important?The book has eleven chapters. Anthony Starr describes a couple of gurus, whom he identifies as people who declare themselves the experts of life. Gurddjieff, Rajneeh, Rudolf Steiner, and the two leading psychologists Jung and Freud are among these. It becomes interesting when there's seemingly different people.Starr has a degree in psychiatry, and he's been a professor at Oxford, a distinguished psychiatrist in the English society, as well as honor members of the Royal College of Physicians and Royal College of Psychiatrists. To deny his achievements and knowledge, would simply be not right.His writing is flowing. The whole book is like a long story, but definitely not a long and boring story. His writing consists of his presentation of the gurus with references from other writers and his personal comments in between, which I find quite logical.The book changed my view over prophets and beliefs. Now I know the reasons why we have major religions, and why some are the only figures in religion. I now recognise the other gurus.It was also interesting to know about the secrets of Jung's psychological sickness at his late age, in addition to how Freud was driven to become the Freud we know of him.This book is worth reading every single page. It's a good analysis, and a good story.
27 of 31 people found the following review helpful. interesting but seems light on substance By James J. Lippard I picked up this book on "a study of gurus" after reading about it in John Horgan's excellent book, Rational Mysticism. The book is composed of biographical sketches of a number of gurus--Gurdjieff, Rasjneesh, Rudolf Steiner, Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, Ignatius Loyola, and Jesus, with occasional remarks about others such as Jim Jones and David Koresh. Storr attempts to identify commonalities among gurus--egocentric, experiencing some kind of personal crisis or madness, re-integrating their personality after the crisis, creating worldviews independent of what was socially accepted, seeking the approval of followers, etc. He distinguishes within the category of gurus between those who act ethically (the saints) from those who are corrupt and abuse their followers (the sinners and the madmen).The remaining chapters of the book examine some of the features identified in the biographical sections in more detail and concludes with a final chapter about those who follow gurus, and the benefits they receive from such a relationship.The book was quite readable, but I found it remarkably light-weight--it seems entirely like armchair theorizing, without the benefit of any kind of detailed scientific research. I learned about the specific gurus described, but I didn't feel like I learned anything solid about what the conditions are that create them, their effects on the world, or how to wean people away from them.
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