Main description:

In Depth Sport Psychology: Reclaiming the Lost Soul of the Athlete is a unique exploration of the vital archetypal elements and themes that emerge when considering elite sportssport psychology through a depth psychological lens. It provides athletes, young people, coaches and clinicians with ways to harness the self, placing athletes on a path towards personal growth and sporting excellence by reconnecting their spirit to their sport.

Burston's multidisciplinary and inclusive approach details the importance of spirituality and other unmeasurable factors, such as emotional recovery, when investigating sporting potential. Incorporating research from classic mythology and the Greek sports academies, he traces sport back to humanity's animalistic and traumatic origins, explores the rise of the Olympic movement, and compares archetypal identities that are shared with athletes today. Relating this to today's financially driven and technological sporting climate, he considers the roots of play, examines the difference in the psyche of team sports and individual players, discusses the crucial, clinical welfare of young people, and dedicates a section to sportswomen. In Depth Sport Psychology emphasises how awakening an athlete's unconscious spirit can positively improve their performance, and offers an applicable methodology for athletes and teachers to use to better understand themselves and achieve brilliance.

Uniquely exploring the connection between Jungian depth psychology and sports, the accessible tone of In Depth Sport Psychology will be key reading for analytical and depth psychologists in practice and in training, sports psychologists and other professionals working with athletes. It will also appeal to athletes and sportspeople interested in exploring a new perspective on sporting excellence.

Contents:

Prologue

Before the Beginning, meet depth sport psychology

My handshake with you, before the whistle blows

The Beginning.

Chapter 1. 'The knowledge'; stone tools to video chat in 30,000 years

The ages of animism and scientism

Women are top cats

The new knowledge; the star

The new male gods of the sky

The first ever Brexit

Chapter 2. The Greek legacy of Sport

The Axial Age and the birth of a sporting world

The birth of science as we know it

Harmonia, the Olympic love child of the shotgun wedding

The Deal; Do the Gods or the gods will do you

The lost soul of the performer

Part-animal, part-computer

Vive la France plus Coubertin

Chapter 3. Sports, here and now

The modern global plume of sport

Cultural pioneers or the road to perdition and abuse

Reconnecting with the soul of sport

Psychosocial Stages and thoughtful cultures in sport

Futures markets in sport

Chapter 4. Don't play at your peril

Playing for peace

Play and player are the same

Immersion and being in your body

Finding your senses

Does the music play us?
Principles important for play

The Middle - Performance and dealing with opposition.

Chapter 5- Dealing with the opposition

The Shadow force of competitive edge

Meet your inferior relative

The positive path for our Shadow worker

Zeus energy

Post match interview and analysis
Finishing off the Shadow

Chapter 6. Women's sports

Creating epoche

Lilly Par the woman history could not forget

The archetypal lineage of the female archers

The four trials of psyche

The current generation of female archers

Chapter 7 - Numbers, Phases and Myths that speak to Sport

Mental fitness, archetypal phases, threats and opportunities

Lucky number seven and sports

Myths that speak to sports
Japan: The Magnificent Seven (as we know it now)
USA: Mickey Mouse, 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice'
Greece: 'Atalanta and the Golden Apples'
Germany: 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin'
The Kalahari: 'The Young Man and the Lion'
The seven deadly sins for the elite athlete

The end.

Chapter 8. Repair, the return to Freud

Good stress or bad stress in the twenty-first century

Now the contest is over

Emerging voices from the depths of psychology

Chapter 9. Freudian depth sport psychology
Tom Ferraro

Case study 1. 'The injury-prone perfectionist', working with a harsh superego: 16-year-old, highly ranked male tennis player
Case study 2. The false-self in a football player
Case study 3. The use of transference in the case of a professional golfer
Case study 4. Wrecked by success: the case of an All-American football player

Epilogue

Bibliography

Index