Book Recommendation - Tarot and Psychology by Arthur Rosengarten, PhD

Welcome to my first book recommendation for this blog.  I want to begin by saying that I am not a slutty bibliophile; I love books, but only the best of the best.  I am not after a "complete" collection of tarot and astrology books; I am after a useful collection of tarot and astrology books.  My time to read is limited and I prefer to keep my bookshelves stocked with books I will actually reread or pull off and reference periodically or regularly.  I constantly weed my shelves, and the books on them are heavily marked up with notes and codes that help me find important references.  This book, Tarot and Psychology: Spectrums of Possibility by Arthur Rosengarten, PhD, provides the reader with one of the best descriptions of Tarot in use in the mainstream practice of psychological counseling, including a section that talks about Tarot work with schizophrenic patients.

Rosengarten writes with academic precision while remaining very accessible to non-academic readers, my favorite kind of writer.  Lately I've been on an Einstein quote kick and Rosengarten is one of those writers who understands a complex subject well enough to explain it simply (Einstein: "If you can't explain it simply, then you don't understand it well enough." http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/alberteins383803.html).  Malcolm Gladwell has this talent as does Stephen J. Gould, Carol Tarvis, Mary Pipher, and rare others.  At the very beginning of the book, in the Introduction, Rosengarten provides a nice summation of the deep power of the Tarot:

"How to explain Tarot to those who would use it properly for the greatest good - individuals who desired greater spirituality in their lives, including the benefits of psychological insight and depth, without the baggage of affiliation that invariably accompanies any single set of beliefs.  Tarot, they will soon find, operates on many levels of profound meaning from a purely non-affiliated platform in the truest sense.  Tarot makes accessible to awareness a full spectrum of psychological and spiritual possibility with little preference for it's users qualifications or beliefs.  Rather, magically one might say, Tarot captures the heartbeat of experience.  This fact alone should make the deck of human possibility, as I call it, immediately relevant to helping professionals who deal with the heartbeat of experience daily." (Rosengarten, 5, 2000)

The entire book is filled with useful knowledge, case studies, and practical techniques and ranks among my top three tarot books (including The Tarot by Cynthia Giles and 21 Ways to Read a Tarot Card by Mary Greer).