The Being and Life Series

The Main Ontological Sources

Ontological sensitivity is where one finds it. The list below is the main books I used for quotations in the Being and Life Series. These books vary in both the quality and the quantity of their insights, with the more important books listed first.

The Main Books and an Article

The Collected Letters of D. H. Lawrence, (2-volume set) Out of print.

R. D. Laing, The Divided Self

“Renee,” The Autobiography of a Schizophrenic Girl

William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

Evelyn Underhill, Practical Mysticism: A Little Book for Normal People and Mysticism: The Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness

Rollo May, Ernest Angel, and Henri F. Ellenberger, Existence: A New Dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology

Carl R. Rogers, On Becoming a Person

J. W. N. Sullivan, Beethoven: His Spiritual Development and Emil Ludwig, Beethoven: Life of a Conqueror

Malcolm L. Hayward, M.D. and J. Edward Taylor, M.D., “A Schizophrenic Patient Describes the Action of Intensive Psychotherapy,” The Psychiatric Quarterly (April 1956).

J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye and Franny and Zooey

Erich Fromm, Beyond the Chains of Illusion

Kenneth Keniston: The Uncommitted: Alienated Youth in America

Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh

Colin Wilson, The Outsider and New Pathways in Psychology: Maslow and the Post-Freudian Revolution

Seymour Krim, Views of a Nearsighted Cannoneer

The Selected Letters of D. H. Lawrence, ed. Diana Trilling

Mabel Dodge Luhan, Lorenzo in Taos

Joseph Nuttin, Psychoanalysis and Personality: A Dynamic Theory of Normal Personality

Henry David Thoreau, The Portable Thoreau (Walden)

R. D. Laing and Aaron Esterson, Sanity, Madness and the Family

Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud: The Formative Years and the Great Discoveries

Matthew Josephson, Stendhal; or, The Pursuit of Happiness

Lawrence and Elisabeth Hanson, Passionate Pilgrim: The Life of Vincent van Gogh

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Van Wyck Brooks, The Ordeal of Mark Twain

Out-of-Print Books

Books that out of print, such as The Collected Letters of D. H. Lawrence, may be available from a used-book dealer, either locally or on-line.

Do You Know of an
Ontologically Sensitive
Author Not on This List?

We are always interested in reading authors who are sensitive and insightful ontologically. If anyone knows of any authors not included in this list, we would like to hear about them. Please send us an e-mail with their names and, if appropriate, their best works to .

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