Pythia Peay A Great Site for 2024
An author and journalist on psychology, spirituality and the American Psyche, Peay’s work has appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, including Utne Magazine, Washingtonian, Religion News Service, The Washington Post, La Repubblica, and elsewhere. She is the author of American Icarus: A Memoir of Father and Country, the iconic American story of her father, Joe Carroll:
The larger-than-life but troubled, alcoholic TWA airman and Missouri farmer she’d adored as a girl but had fled as an adult, his dramatic last days and redemptive death through the intervention of a quirky Hospice team, and her discovery of the larger American myths and narratives that shaped his life.
She is also the author of America on the Couch: Psychological Perspectives on American Politics and Culture, a collection of thirty-seven interviews with some of the world’s leading psychologists and psychoanalysts, including James Hillman, Robert Jay Lifton, and Judith V. Jordan, on such issues as violence, addiction, capitalism and consumerism, and more. She writes the America on the Couch blog for Psychology Today and The Huffington Post and has received awards for her work from The American Association of University Women and Women in the Media.
I have learned that in addition to the spirit of this time there is still another spirit at work, namely that which rules the depths of everything contemporary. Carl Jung, The Red Book
As a depth journalist, my work is to cover – or “uncover” — the psychological, spiritual, historical and archetypal dimensions underlying surface events. What drives me as a writer is the search for the inner story concealed within outer facts, whether current events such as political polarization and the environmental crisis, or more personal topics such as family and creativity. I believe that finding the hidden themes operating in the background of our everyday lives helps to deepen our understanding of the complex issues we struggle with in the modern world, while connecting us to those larger forces shaping our individual lives. It’s what keeps me writing and researching and, I hope, will keep readers reading.
Pythia Peay Depth Journalist, Author Speaker
Pythia Peay is the author of AMERICAN ICARUS: A MEMOIR OF FATHER AND COUNTRY and AMERICA ON THE COUCH: PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE AMERICAN PSYCHE.
What lies behind America’s historic romance with the gun? Why does it have such a troubled relationship with alcohol and drugs? Why is it so wedded to consumerism and so resistant to the evidence of climate change?
What are its enduring myths about individuality, freedom, and independence, and how might we re-imagine our vision of the United States as the “Promised Land” and “The City on the Hill” to reflect a multiculturalism that offers “the last, best hope” for the world?
In a two-decades long journey through the American psyche, depth journalist Pythia Peay has asked these and many more questions of no fewer than thirty-six of the world’s leading psychologists and psychoanalysts.
From Robert Jay Lifton to Marion Woodman, A. Thomas McLellan to Judith V. Jordan, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to June Singer, and James Hillman to Mary Pipher, the thinkers in America on the Couch discuss violence, addiction, the environment, capitalism and consumerism, politics and power, and the soul of America.
The result is a uniquely comprehensive, wide-ranging, and compelling kaleidoscope of insights into the psychodynamics of a hegemon in peace and at war, as it confronts the shadows of the American century and charts its way into an uncertain, multi-polar future.
Featuring Stephen Aizenstat, John Beebe , Bonnie Bright, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Philip Cushman, Larry Decker, Raymond De Young, Edward Edinger, Michael Eigen, Stephen J. Foster, Charles Grob, Bud Harris, A. Chris Heath, James Hillman, Judith V. Jordan, Donald Kalsched, Robert J. Langs, Linda Schierse Leonard, Harriet Lerner, Robert Jay Lifton, A. Thomas McLellan, Thomas Moore, Ginette Paris, Mary Pipher, Ernest Rossi, Andrew Samuels, Erel Shalit, June Singer, Thomas Singer, Lawrence Staples, Murray Stein, Charles B. Strozier, Paul Wachtel, Karen B. Walant, Marion Woodman, and Luigi Zoja.
America on the Couch by Pythia Peay
What lies behind America’s historic romance with the gun? Why does it have such a troubled relationship with alcohol and drugs? Why is it so wedded to consumerism and so resistant to the evidence of climate change?
What are its enduring myths about individuality, freedom, and independence, and how might we re-imagine our vision of the United States as the “Promised Land” and “The City on the Hill” to reflect a multiculturalism that offers “the last, best hope” for the world?
In a two-decades long journey through the American psyche, depth journalist Pythia Peay has asked these and many more questions of no fewer than thirty-six of the world’s leading psychologists and psychoanalysts.
From Robert Jay Lifton to Marion Woodman, A. Thomas McLellan to Judith V. Jordan, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to June Singer, and James Hillman to Mary Pipher, the thinkers in America on the Couch discuss violence, addiction, the environment, capitalism and consumerism, politics and power, and the soul of America.
The result is a uniquely comprehensive, wide-ranging, and compelling kaleidoscope of insights into the psychodynamics of a hegemon in peace and at war, as it confronts the shadows of the American century and charts its way into an uncertain, multi-polar future.
Featuring Stephen Aizenstat, John Beebe , Bonnie Bright, Gary S. Bobroff , Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Philip Cushman, Larry Decker, Raymond De Young, Edward Edinger, Michael Eigen, Stephen J. Foster, Charles Grob, Bud Harris, A. Chris Heath, James Hillman, Judith V. Jordan, Donald Kalsched, Robert J. Langs, Linda Schierse Leonard, Harriet Lerner, Robert Jay Lifton, A. Thomas McLellan, Thomas Moore, Ginette Paris, Mary Pipher, Ernest Rossi, Andrew Samuels, Erel Shalit, June Singer, Thomas Singer, Lawrence Staples, Murray Stein, Charles B. Strozier, Paul Wachtel, Karen B. Walant, Marion Woodman, and Luigi Zoja.

Introduces the astrological significance of the thrice-yearly cycle during which the planet Mercury appears to run backward in its orbit, explaining how negative or inauspicious prospects can be worked strategically to enable beneficial retreats, slowdowns, and renewal periods. Original.
Mercury Retrograde by Pythia Peay

A unique workbook to help women cultivate their full potential through the lives and lessons of the heroines of world spiritual traditions.
Filled with exercises, anecdotes, quotes, and inspiration, Pythia Peay’s Soul Sisters is designed to help women foster the traits that can be found in the great spiritual traditions of the world, and that are most needed in contemporary life. Each chapter shows how to cultivate the five “divine qualities”: Courage, Faith, Beauty, Love, and Magic.
Soul Sisters offers an abundance of examples of different female figures from the spiritual past and present who have embodied these characteristics in a distinctly feminine way. Through the road they have walked, readers can learn to discover their own individual heart-path to these strengths.
Both an immensely practical workbook and an education in spiritual ideas, Soul Sisters is a companion for a lifetime.
Soul Sisters: The Five Sacred Qualities of a Woman’s Soul

This is the story of Joe Carroll: fully paid-up member of the Greatest Generation, aviator, farmer, and handsome Irish charmer who radiated exuberance for life–a literal and metaphorical flying boy. With his head in the clouds, this American Icarus embodied all that was aspirational and attractive about mid-twentieth-century America, with its technical ingenuity, bravado, and its belief that the only way was up. But Joe was also a destructive, impulsive alcoholic; like many of that generation he held experiences and feelings close to the chest. Only on his deathbed did Joe acknowledge the pull of gravity, reaching out to his estranged family, reflecting over his life, and contemplating the afterlife.
American Icarus: A Memoir of Father and Country