Varieties of Sexual Experience: Naomi Mitchison, Mysticism and Gerald Heard
Imogen Woodberry
Naomi Mitchison March 31, 2023 DOI: 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474494748.003.0004 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Mysticism |
| Key points | Argues that Naomi Mitchison's work exemplifies an interwar progressive tendency to connect social reform with self-cultivation, showing how Gerald Heard's ideas about expanding consciousness shaped her politics and how polyamory informed her socialist vision in We Have Been Warned (1935). |
Abstract
This chapter examines ideas of socialist self-fashioning in Naomi Mitchison’s work, arguing that she is symptomatic of a tendency within interwar progressive politics that connected social reform with the cultivation of the self. The first part traces her involvement with the public intellectual Gerald Heard, examining the way in which she was influenced by his ideas of the need to expand human consciousness as a way of facilitating political change. The second section explores the importance of polyamory to Mitchison’s idea of socialism in her novel We Have Been Warned (1935).
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on mysticism, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| The mystical mind: probing the biology of religious experience | 2000 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Religious and Mystical Experiences as Artifacts of Temporal Lobe Function: A General Hypothesis | 1983 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| The Problem of Pure Consciousness: Mysticism and Philosophy | 1993 | Edited collection of essays | |
| Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century | 2020 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Mysticism and schizophrenia: A phenomenological exploration of the structure of consciousness in the schizophrenia spectrum disorders. | 2016 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |