User:Canhelp/sandbox/Brian J. McVeigh

Brian J. McVeigh (born 1959) is a scholar of Asia specialized in Japanese popular culture, education, politics, and history. He is also a theorist of cultural psychology and historical changes in human mentality. He received his doctorate in 1991 from Princeton University's Department of Anthropology. While a graduate student, he studied under Julian Jaynes, and he credits Jaynes as a formative influence. After spending 16 years working and writing in East Asia, McVeigh taught at the University of Arizona until 2013. Most recently, as a licensed mental health counselor, he has researched and applied Jaynesian psychology for therapeutic purposes.

Asia Years
After one year of post-doctoral study at Beijing University, McVeigh relocated to Japan, where he quickly gained recognition as a significant social critic and author. His 1997 book Life in a Japanese Women's College, cited by The Economist as "meant for serious study," was described in the Journal of Japanese Studies as "a vehement critique of Japanese education as state-managed technocratic training and sorting, to the severe detriment of humanistic teaching and learning." Other books followed. Duncan McCargo, reviewing McVeigh's 1998 The Nature of the Japanese State for the Japan Forum, described McVeigh as "a major new analyst of contemporary Japan. Trained as an anthropologist of religion, McVeigh is nevertheless a social science all-rounder, equally at home in the fields of education, sociology, and politics. His skills in empirical research, coupled with his impressive capacity for lateral thinking, make him ideally placed to develop nuanced and subtle readings of Japanese society." Reviewers of McVeigh's Wearing Ideology: State, Schooling, and Self-Preservation in Japan (2000) found that book "powerful and evocative", "stunning...a book that must be read" , "intriguing and plausible" , "insightful and provocative" , "a thought-provoking book" , an "insightful glimpse into a part of Japanese society that has been under examined," , and "Systematic in its approach, empirically committed, containing a host of insights, and theoretically informed...McVeigh is both honest and brave...." McVeigh's 2002 Japanese Higher Education as Myth was nominated for the Francis Hsu Book Prize in 2004. The reviewer for Journal of Japanese Studies wrote, "McVeigh's book is "a provocative addition to the debate on Japanese higher education and should be compulsory reading for anyone in the field....the winds of change are in fact gathering pace. This may be due not only to the economic recession and the demographic decline in Heisei Japan, but also to the sustained efforts of critics of the system -- including McVeigh himself."

Post Asia
Upon his return to the United States to take a teaching position at the University of Arizona, McVeigh broadened and elevated his scholarly attentions, inspired by the influence of his Princeton mentor Jaynes. In 2008, he used a review of Russell Hurlburt and Eric Schwitzgebel's Describing Inner Experience: A Proponent Meets Skeptic to argue that "besides treating questions of cultural comparison, a well-balanced psychology must also confront chronological changes in the human psyche. What is needed is a 'stratigraphic psychology.'" The proposal urged psychology scholars to expand their discipline temporally, to explore the adaptive changes from pre-conscious human mentalities and potentially to anticipate future adaptations. McVeigh's review cites as a benchmark and point of departure Jaynes's The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. And seven of McVeigh's eight books published since 2015 seek to explicate, extend, and apply formulations derived in part from Jaynes. McVeigh currently serves as senior researcher and advisor for the.

Selected publications

 * McVeigh, Brian J. The Psychology of Westworld: When Machines Go Mad. Kindle Edition. Amazon.com Services, 2018.
 * McVeigh, Brian J. The Psychology of the Bible: Explaining Divine Voices and Visions. Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic, 2020.
 * McVeigh, Brian J. The "Other" Psychology of Julian Jaynes: Ancient Languages, Sacred Visions, and Forgotten Mentalities. Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic, 2017.
 * McVeigh, Brian J. How Religion Evolved: Explaining the Living Dead, Talking Idols, and Mesmerizing Monuments. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2016.
 * McVeigh, Brian J. Discussions with Julian Jaynes: The Nature of Consciousness and the Vagaries of Psychology.  New York, NY: Nova Science Publishers, 2016.
 * McVeigh, Brian J. The History of Japanese Psychology: Global Perspectives, 1875-1950.  London, UK: Bloomsbury, 2017.
 * McVeigh, Brian J. A Psychohistory of Metaphors: Envisioning Time, Space, and Self through the Centuries.  Lanham, Maryland: Lexington, 2016.
 * McVeigh, Brian J. The Propertied Self: The Psychology of Economic History.  New York, NY: Nova Science Publishers, 2015.
 * McVeigh, Brian J. Interpreting Japan: Approaches and Applications for the Classroom. London: Routledge, 2014.
 * McVeigh, Brian J. Mental Imagery and Hallucinations as Adaptive Behavior: Divine Voices and Visions as Neuropsychological Vestiges. The International Journal of the Image, Volume 3, Issue 1, pp. 25‒36.
 * McVeigh, Brian J. Spirits, Selves, and Subjectivity in a Japanese New Religion: The Cultural Psychology of Belief in Sûkyô Mahikari.  Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1997.
 * McVeigh, Brian J. Life in a Japanese Women’s College: Learning to Be Ladylike.  London: Routledge, 1998.
 * McVeigh, Brian J. The Nature of the Japanese State: Rationality and Rituality.  London: Routledge, 1998.
 * McVeigh, Brian J. Wearing Ideology: State, Schooling, and Self-Presentation in Japan.  Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2000.
 * McVeigh, Brian J. Japanese Higher Education as Myth.  Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2002.
 * McVeigh, Brian J. Nationalisms of Japan: Managing and Mystifying Identity  Boulder, Colorado: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.
 * McVeigh, Brian J. The State Bearing Gifts: Deception and Disaffection in Japanese Higher Education.  Boulder, Colorado: Lexington Books, 2006.