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Academic Works

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Welcome to our Academic Works section. Here you can browse the academic titles we have available. They are used as textbooks or assigned as supplemental reading in college curriculums. Also of note is the journal Modern Psychoanalysis, which we publish biannually.

If you would like to have your manuscript considered by us, please follow the instructions given here.

The Early Jesus Movement and Its Congregations
Their Cities, Conflicts, and Triumphs
By Harry W. Eberts, Jr. and Paul R. Eberts

The Early Jesus Movement was initially centered in Jerusalem but soon produced four distinct parties—Disciples, Brethren, Hellenists, and Apostles—each ministering to different ethnic groups in Jerusalem and throughout the Roman Empire. Almost inadvertently, this diversity contributed to the movement’s strength in speedily spreading through the Mediterranean world.  

By going from one Jewish synagogue to another, built all over the Empire in response to earlier Jewish diasporas, by 60 CE at least one of the four parties established congregations in many of the Empire’s cities, including its four largest, Rome, Corinth, Alexandria, and Ephesus. Although a patron-client-slave social structure dominated each city, the cities’ histories and cultures also differed considerably, challenging Christian congregations with issues of social class antagonisms, gender, slavery, poverty, use of magic, paganism, and Roman rules against promulgating “foreign” religions and even forming associations. Due to their proximity with one another in these cities, the congregations also had to learn to deal with their ministries’ differences.  

Growing influence of Gentiles within the movement undoubtedly contributed both to controversies among the parties but also to their eventual resolution. The Apostle Paul’s Letters (especially Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans) provide an insider’s look at the controversies and their consequences on the movement. We see Stephen’s blood spilled as Hebrew fought Hellenist. We watch Paul vilified, beaten, and even stoned for his ideas.  We learn that in Rome during Nero’s persecution of Christians (64 CE on), Christians informed on one another, just as Judas had done to Jesus. Such deep-seated controversies also divided the various parties. Yet a spirit (they called it the Spirit of Christ) kept influential Christians working with one another.  

A chapter on each city offers details on how their congregations coped with the problems. In general, Disciples and Brethren parties responded by re-interpreting historically Jewish traditions. In contrast, Hellenists’ and Apostles’ re-interpretations blended Jesus’ teachings with historically Greek traditions. We believe that to observe and understand these issues as they took place is an exciting venture. We invite you to join us in it.

The Early Jesus Movement and Its Parties
A New Way to Look at the New Testament
By Harry W. Eberts, Jr. and Paul R. Eberts

What have generations of New Testament scholars
been hiding from us over all the ages?

 Harry and Paul Eberts have produced a book that challenges readers to rethink how they approach the New Testament. Most scholars have presumed a reasonably unified movement among the Christian churches led by Peter, Paul, James, and Philip during the period immediately following Jesus’ death and resurrection. This book suggests that at least four parties—one led by Peter and the other eleven disciples; one by James the brother of Jesus and as many as 500 “brethren;” one by Stephen, Philip, and Apollos who were Greek-speaking Jews having Alexandria as their base; and one by Paul and Barnabas (among other apostles) “who did not know Jesus in the flesh”— vied with each other to portray Jesus as the Son of God.

Up to now, most scholars have presumed the Gospels to be at least somewhat “additive” in developing the character of Jesus. The Eberts’ suggest that each Gospel represents the viewpoint of one of the four parties, thus presenting differing views of the meaning of Jesus’ life, his death, and his resurrection. For a long time, scholars have presumed the “Jesus movement” was unified in its evangelizing, but the Eberts’ posit that the four parties went among different ethnic groups initially, but came to compete for the same converts while undercutting each other, as they did in Ephesus and Corinth, in seeking to convert Jews and Gentiles to Christianity.

Scholars have believed that small differences in churches’ governance and worship were “options” chosen by each congregation. But the Eberts’ suggest that each party developed its own patterns of church governance, worship, and practices. There has been the regular presumption that St. Paul’s letters were unified statements of his views of beliefs, behaviors, and practices in the early churches. The Eberts’ instead suggest a shifting over time that is shown by his letters, in Paul’s theology and ethics as the apostles struggled with the other Christian parties and with the Gentiles to convert nonbelievers to Christianity.

The book speaks directly to these and other controversies as it carefully documents directly from New Testament writings how, where, and why these four parties emerged to struggle with each other and thereby generate what are now considered the major sacred writings about that historical figure identified first as Jesus of Nazareth and later known as Jesus the Christ.

ISBN: 978-0-9824012-3-1    144 pages

Click here to view sample pages from Chapter 1 of The Early Jesus Movement

Click here to visit the authors' blog

The Hate That Cures
The Psychological Reversibility of Schizophrenia
By Evelyn Liegner

The Hate that Cures by Evelyn Liegner, the second book in the series, The Development of Modern Psychoanalysis, gives a moment-by-moment account of the reversal of psychosis using Modern Psychoanalytic techniques. Detailed notes from sessions are used to illuminate how the patient is healed by the emotional communication of hatred within the transference and countertransference. Liegner shows how Modern Psychoanalytic interventions facilitate the ability of the ego to handle a broad range of feelings and impulses.

How I Arrived At This Conclusion
A Philosophical Memoir
By Charles Renouvier
Translated by Bernard J. Looks

Charles Renouvier (1815–1903) is properly regarded as one of France ’s greatest philosophers of the nineteenth century and an important figure in the modern history of French politics and education.

    Not only is this memoir, Comment je suis arrivé à cette conclusion, the first work by Renouvier to be translated into English, but as Renouvier claimed for it, the first published philosophical memoir, tracing the development of a philosopher’s mature philosophical position.

    In critically distinguishing his views from from those of the major philosophers including those of Immanuel Kant, he has written a most useful ancillary text for the study of modern western philosophy. More, both as a philosopher and a man, Renouvier influenced the work of the American psychologist and philosopher, William James, who regarded him as a mentor. Among others influenced by Renouvier was the French sociologist, Emile Durkheim, the American philosopher, Charles Sanders Pierce, the German philosopher, Karl Marx, the French philosopher, Octave Hamlin, the French poet and novelist, Victor Hugo, and the French novelist and critic, Julien Benda.

       The most recent attempts to replace philosophical as well as religious explanations of the origins and existence of the universe with purely scientific ones should heighten the interest in Renouvier’s memoir. For, while he attempts a purely scientific explanation, he arrives at startlingly different conclusions.

 Bernard J. Looks holds a Ph.D. in modern European History from Columbia University. He has published Triumph Through Adversity, a memoir of the life and work of Martin S. Dworkin, a book of Dworkin’s poetry, entitled, Unfinished Ruins, and articles on education and film criticism.

Click to view some sample pages from the book (Title page, Introduction, Index)

ISBN: 978-1-936411-05-4   94 pages

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The Emergence of the Wonder Child and Other Papers
By Arnold Bernstein

Modern Psychoanalysis takes its point of departure from the problems left unresolved by Freud and his original associates. Modern Psychoanalysis was first introduced to the wider professional community by Hyman Spotnitz in 1961-62 in a series of postgraduate lectures chaired by the author, given at the Stuyvesant Polyclinic in New York City.

The Emergence of the Wonder Child will interest all who are concerned to understand and advance Modern Psychoanalysis. It will have special appeal to practicing psychoanalysts seeking to master the science of therapy. While the treatment methods described here differ considerably from the orthodox treatment parameters, they follow along a natural continuum from classical psychoanalytic doctrine. 

The Emergence of the Wonder Child is the inaugural volume in The Development of Modern Psychoanalysis series created by the Center for Modern Psychoanalysis in New York City.

ISBN: 978-0-9824012-7-9   246 pages

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Tibetan Weddings in Ne'u na Village
By Tshe dbang rdo rje with Charles Kevin Stuart and Alexandru Anton-Luca

This second work in the ethnographic preservation of the traditions of Tibet follows the publication in 2008 of Life and Marriage in Skya rgya, a Tibetan Village.

The book has three distinct sections: a brief historical introduction to Ne'u na Village, a detailed, sequenced description of a generalized Ne'u na wedding accompanied by related songs and speeches, and three interlinked case studies breathing life into and bringing specificity to the description. As background information, the author discusses the ethnic composition of the village, which in addition to Amdo Tibetans comprises both Han Chinese and Hui Muslim families.

Through Tshe dbang rdo rje's minute observation, description of pre-marriage deals and the actual wedding ceremony, readers can almost see it happening before their very eyes. Also, the detailed description of the actual wedding party as well as the careful rendering of each song, opens a door to the marriage ceremony. Song texts are given in free English translation, in oral Tibetan, literary Tibetan, IPA and as word by word renditions in English.

The third section contains the case studies. While the matchmaker in chapter three is a busy, anonymous figure shuttling messages and gifts between the prospective groom and bride's families, the results of Bka' dbang sgrol ma's visit in chapter six to her younger sister sets off a chain of events that forever influence fundamental aspects of the family's life.

The result is a multidisciplinary documentation of the wedding practices in the Amdo Tibetan village of Ne'u na, located in the present-day Qinghai (Mtsho sngon) Province, on the historical frontier between China and Tibet.

ISBN: 978-0-9824012-0-0    214 pages

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A Singer's Manual of Foreign Language Dictions
By Richard F. Sheil, Ph.D.

Professor Richard Sheil lays out the fundamentals for singing accurately and clearly in the crucial languages for singers: Roman Church Latin, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Spanish, and Russian.  

Emeritus professor of music in the State University of New York, Richard F. Sheil guides students, singers and anyone who wishes to sing properly in a foreign language through an education of the highest degree.  His writing is clear and lively.  His comprehensive text will be an indispensable tool for every singer from established professionals to voice majors to those who want to sing in church on Sunday morning.  A lesson from Professor Sheil will revitalize your expression of all these languages.

 ISBN 0-9703923-7-0    196 pages

A Singer's Manual of Foreign Language Dictions
Price: $27.95
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Review copies provided without cost to academics and professionals. Please provide academic or association affiliation by email to deskcopy@YBKPublishers.com with request.

If you would like to read a sample from this book, please click here!


(NOTE: You must have Adobe Acrobat Reader to view the sample pages!)

Click here to view the Table of Contents

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Religion:
What It Has Been and What It Is
By Jay G. Williams

What It Has Been

Beginning with a review of the human needs that all religions seek to fulfill, Dr. Williams traces the world’s religions as they evolved through four cultural channels: China , India and South Asia , the Near East, and Europe. The histories of all the great religious traditions—Confucianism, the Greek and Roman pantheons, Judaism and Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Taoism, Islam—evolved through the four great world cultures and often followed empires as they conquered and expanded.

What It Is

The various religious traditions are followed down all four cultural streams to contemporary time—through their confrontations with the Enlightenment, Nietszche (“God is dead!”), Freud, and perhaps most profoundly with Darwin. The fundamentalist and moderate threads of both the Islamic and the Judaeo-Christian fabrics are thoughtfully examined.

 
About the author
Jay G. Williams is chair of the department of religious studies and director of Asian studies of Hamilton College. He is the author of books and monographs and of many articles in comparative religion.

Click on the links below to view sample pages from the book:
Title and Table of Contents
The Near East - Sumer, Egypt, Assyria, and Babylonia
Early Chinese Buddhism
The Modern Near East and Europe
Index

Religion: What It Has Been and What It Is
Price: $28.95
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Modern Psychoanalysis of the Schizophrenic Patient:
Theory of the Technique
By Hyman Spotnitz, M.D., Med.Sc.D.
Second Edition

What Freud called the "stone wall" was first breached by this pioneering psychiatrist and psychoanalyst with this seminal work in 1969.  This substantially revised and enlarged edition is the comprehensive and definitive handbook for practitioners of the talking cure of the disorders that arise before speech.

ISBN 0-9703923-6-2    250 pages    $47.50

Modern Psych of the Schizophrenic Patient
Price: $47.50
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If you would like to read a sample from this book, please click here!


(NOTE: You must have Adobe Acrobat Reader to view the sample pages!)

Click here to view the subject index.

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Life and Marriage in Skya rgya:
A Tibetan Village
By Blo brtan rdo rje with Charles Kevin Stuart

Life and Marriage in Skya rgya, a Tibetan Village is an important achievement, delving deep into contemporary Tibetan society, enabling us to explore the crucial negotiations between tradition and modernity, both individually and collectively, that confront present-day Tibetan villagers.

The ethnographic discussion of songs, marriage practices, and narratives gives us direct insight into the lives, experiences and expectations of ordinary Tibetans, sharing the joys and pains, and the hopes and fears of these Tibetans, old and young. We observe how the dilemmas and celebrations that characterized an earlier era persist and evolve as the local society is propelled into twenty-first century China. Blo brtan rdo rje’s honest rendering of the details of his family life make this a page-turning account of life in a rural Tibetan area that is vanishing.

*    *    *

Skya rgya is a farming village in A mdo, the Tibetan name by which the northwest of the Tibetan Plateau is known. While Tibetans largely welcome the material benefits that have been brought to them by the march of modernity, it is also inevitable that many of their older traditions have come to be seen as outdated. By juxtaposing voices from earlier periods with those that reflect contemporary experiences, [the author] has provided us with a fascinating window onto the processes of change and development, as they are being experienced by Tibetans in this area.

This book provides a rich resource for all those interested in the history and culture of the region, . . . . [the author’s narratives give] us a direct and vivid insight into the lives, experiences and expectations of members of his home community. By letting four of his informants speak to us directly he allows us to enter into the joys and pains, hopes and fears of these Tibetans, old and young. We have a rare chance to observe how the dilemmas and celebrations that characterized an early era have persisted or evolved as local society is propelled into the modern world of twenty-first century China.

Fernanda Pirie
The Centre for Socio-Legal Studies
Oxford University


Blo brtan rdo rje’s honest rendering of the details of his family life and his experiences conducting field
research make this a page-turning account of life in a rural Tibetan area that is already vanishing.
When Blo brtan rdo rje was young, there was not even a bridge to cross the Yellow River into Gcan tsha
County; coracle boats were the principle mode of transport across the river. After bridges were built in
the late 1980s, life has been changing rapidly

This is not to suggest that no change had come to this Tibetan village before this time, as the arrival of
the troops of the Muslim warlord, Ma Bufang, prior to the Communist period are also documented
here. The forced conversion of neighboring (down-valley) Tibetans to Islam was a crucial vehicle for
the later commercial changes introduced in the 1990s.

Gray Tuttle
Department of East Asia Languages and Cultures
Columbia University

Click on the links below to view sample pages from the book:
Title and Table of Contents
Full Preface by Fernanda Pirie
The Arranged Marriages of Young Children
Introduction to the Village of Skya rgya

Life and Marriage in Skya rgya, a Tibetan Village
Price: $33.50
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The Jottings of David Daube
Edited By Calum MacNeill Carmichael

David Daube’s life spanned almost the entire 20th century and he was witness to itshistory. Born a Jew in Germany in 1909, he spent World War II and its aftermath in Britain on the faculties of Cambridge, Aberdeen, and Oxford. He came to the United States in the ’60s—to the University of California at Berkeley where he reveled in what he called the “unmanicured, unclubbable, countercultural attitudes.” Through it all he never lost his love for the land of his birth—though it didn’t love him back for many years: he was on Hitler’s list of those to be put to death once Germany had conquered England.

One of the great legal minds of our time, Daube’s depth of scholarship in a range of subjects—ancient literature, English literature, ancient law, medical ethics, much more—was matched by a dazzling agility and originality of mind—for instance: though raised in an Orthodox Jewish home, he produced strikingly original work on the New Testament.

Not your typical fusty professor, he was a brilliant and charming commentator onmatters personal, political, social, and philosophical. The reader of these jottings (set down in the 1970s and ’80s) will understand within a page or two why those who knew him treasured him as a friend, mentor, and intellectual provocateur. These private reflections, gathered by one of his most distinguished students, are charming, insightful, thought-provoking, sometimes profound, and sometimes just amusing. His commentaries on political and social issues of his time ranged from bravely original thought on Israel and the Palestinians to an amusing and enlightening review of thesensational porn film Deep Throat.

Here are some sample jottings:

“I love women. They provide the unhappiness that I need in life.”

“People are more struck by the asininity of the law when they are trapped by it thanwhen they are let off.”

“We are all of us survivors all the time; everything that is, is a survivor relative to what has fallen by the wayside. Naturally, having escaped from Hitler’s clutches myself, I am a bit more alive to the whole business than the average guy.”

ISBN 978-0-9800508-1-3   204 pages

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