Maps of Meaning

Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief is a 1999 book by Canadian clinical psychologist and psychology professor Jordan Peterson. The book describes a theory for how people construct meaning, in a way that is compatible with the modern scientific understanding of how the brain functions. It examines the "structure of systems of belief and the role those systems play in the regulation of emotion", using "multiple academic fields to show that connecting myths and beliefs with science is essential to fully understand how people make meaning". Peterson spent more than 13 years writing the book in an attempt to "explain the meaning of history". In it, he briefly reflects on his childhood and on being raised in a Christian family. The responses to his questions about the literal truth of Biblical stories seemed ignorant, causing him to lose interest in attending church. During adolescence and early adulthood he tried finding the answer to "the general social and political insanity and evil of the world" (from Cold War to totalitarianism) and for a short period of time he embraced socialism and political science. Finding himself unsatisfied and falling into a depression, he discovered inspiration in the ideas of Carl Jung and decided to pursue psychology. Peterson began to write Maps of Meaning in the mid-1980s, and used text from it (then titled as The Gods of War) during his classes teaching as an assistant professor of psychology at Harvard University. He initially intended to use it in an application for academic tenure at Harvard, but found that he was not emotionally up to the task, nor was he "in the position to make the strongest case for myself". The prospect of steady employment was attractive as he had two children by then, and so he decided to accept an offer from the University of Toronto in 1998. According to Craig Lambert, writing in Harvard Magazine, the book is influenced by Jung's archetypal ideas about the collective unconscious and evolutionary psychology.