Despite rhythm and blues culture’s undeniable role in molding, reflecting, and reshaping black cultural production, consciousness, and politics, it has yet to receive the serious scholarly examination it deserves. Destructive Desires corrects this omission by analyzing how post-Civil Rights era rhythm and blues culture articulates competing and conflicting political, social, familial, and economic desires within and for African American communities. As an important form of black cultural production, rhythm and blues music helps us to understand black political and cultural desires and longings in light of neo-liberalism’s increased codification in America’s racial politics and policies since the 1970s. Robert J. Patterson provides a thorough analysis of four artists—Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, Adina Howard, Whitney Houston, and Toni Braxton—to examine black cultural longings by demonstrating how our reading of specific moments in their lives, careers, and performances serve as metacommentaries for broader issues in black culture and politics.

Human desire is a fundamental part of our existence. They drive us to seek pleasure, security, and connection with others. But when left unchecked, these desires can lead to destructive and harmful behaviors. In this book, we explore the evolution of human desires, the negative consequences of unchecked desires, and strategies for reducing the power of desires.

Happiness and the Christian Moral Life introduces students to Christian ethics through the lens of happiness. The book suggests that the heart of ethics is not rules and obligations but our deep desire for happiness and fulfillment. We achieve that happiness when we become people who love the good and seek it in everything we do. The third edition of this reader-friendly text has been revised and updated throughout. It introduces Christian ethics with sensitivity towards readers who may not be Christian themselves. After an overview of basic concepts and key thinkers such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, subsequent chapters explore the importance of narrative in Christian ethics, the place of friendship and community in Christian moral life, the role of virtues in our quest for fulfillment, a Christian understanding of the person, a Christian theology of freedom, and false steps on the path to happiness. Final chapters discuss the role of conscience and prudence, love, and justice. The third edition has been re-structured to better meet teaching needs by moving the discussion of narrative earlier in the book. This edition features fresh, global examples; revised introductions to key thinkers; discussions of tough, contemporary topics such as hook-up culture; careful consideration of the words of Pope Francis on themes ranging from consumerism and freedom to love and the environment; and more.

Based on work in the anxiety-provoking and emotional environment of professional football, this book explores the effect that emotions have on the relationships and relatedness of team members; and, the struggles experienced in controlling and managing emotions by leaders and managers of teams. More specifically, this book explores the conflicts associated with the process of managing the boundary between what is inside and what is outside: between what is in the manager's mind and what is happening in the external environment.

An Introduction to Psychoanalytic Theory of Motivation details the fundamental concepts in applying the psychoanalytic theory in understanding motivation. The title addresses the short-comings of the psychoanalytic theory, particularly the lack of scientific literature. The first part of the text covers the critical concepts in psychoanalytic theory, such as the psychological forces, defense mechanisms, superego, and primal desires. In the second part, the selection details the theory at work; this part discusses the major stages of life from a psychoanalytic perspective. The text also talks about a system of psychopathology, along with the consideration to take in psychotherapy. The book will be of great interest to students, researchers, and practitioners of behavioral science.

Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture is a rich testament to our ubiquitous preoccupation with the tangled web of death and desire. In these pages we find nuanced analysis that blends Plato with Shelley, Hölderlin with Foucault. Dollimore, a gifted thinker, is not content to summarize these texts from afar; instead, he weaves a thread through each to tell the magnificent story of the making of the modern individual.

The book identifies most human nature characteristics defining the behavior of humans and contrasting them with socialist beliefs. Most political systems forget to consider human nature in their approaches and choose to apply biased policies invented by bureaucrats. People's behavioral mechanisms are different. No two people have the same amount of aggressiveness or defensiveness in a specific scenario. Socialism imposition of a unique viewpoint that has to be accepted by everybody is a misunderstanding of human's idiosyncratic nature.

Uncovers Hobbes's distinction between reasons of the good and the right, which was a watershed in the history of ethics.

Are you tired of the same old stuff (S.O.S)? Have you heard enough about the “New Age”? Do you long for something fresh and exciting? Then perhaps this book is for you. It’s not about the same old tired reality that’s been talked about for decades. It’s not a sugar-coated, love and light routine. And it’s not another “feel-good” manual or “how to succeed without really trying” rehash. It’s not psycho babble, quick fix therapy, preaching or lamenting a cause. This book takes a no-nonsense look at what is really happening — behind the scenes, above the scenes and beyond the scenes. It addresses the issues you and I are facing right now and will be facing for a long time to come. It uses the past only as a springboard for stepping into the unknown, into the big picture. It exposes the lies, coverups, deceit, control and manipulation that have kept the people of Earth locked into rigid systems of dogma and despair. But it also offers real solutions that are timely, and yet, timeless. It gives you ideas that can help you put the pieces of the cosmic jigsaw together. And practical advice that can stimulate your creative juices. Get out your surfboard and ride the cutting edge!

This is the first study to examine desire in the Iliad in a comprehensive way, and to explain its relationship to the epic's narrative structure and audience reception. Rachel H. Lesser offers a new reading of the poem that shows how the characters' desires, especially those of the mortal hero Achilleus and the divine king Zeus, motivate plot and keep the audience engaged with the epic until and even beyond its end. The author argues that the characters' desires are primarily organized in narrative triangles that feature two parties in conflict over a third. A variety of desires animate these triangles, including sexual passion, longing for a lost loved one, yearning for lamentation, and aggressive desires for vengeance and status, and they are signified with terms such as eros, himeros, pothe, menos, thumos, boule, and eeldor, as well as through the epic's thematic emotions of grief and anger. Desire in the Iliad shows how the mortals' and gods' triangular desires together drive and shape two Iliadic plots, the main plot of Achilleus' withdrawal from the fighting and then return to battle, and the "superplot" of the larger Trojan War story. The author also argues that these plots and their motivating desires arouse the listener's-or reader's-own corresponding desires: narrative desire to know and understand the Iliad's full story, sympathetic desire for characters' welfare, and empathetic passions, longings, and wishes. Our desires invest us in the epic narrative and their resolution brings us satisfaction.