Four Rivers Press

Our Mission

At Four Rivers Press, we publish life-enhancing works which take the reader on a voyage of self-discovery and self-realization. Our catalogue emphasizes texts that stem directly from life experience and personal encounter, supported, where helpful, with a nod in the direction of relevant scholarship and contemporary thought.

We cherish writing that gives voice to the inalienable individuality of personal experience—its immediacy, its idiosyncratic variables, its "one-off" formulations of thought and concept, and its unpredictable and often fruitful forays into the realm of the subjective. These qualities are all pathways to discovery and adventure for both writer and reader.

Our audience are students of life and living. We hope that the books of Four Rivers Press will nourish, benefit and embolden your aspirations, experiences and realizations.

If our offerings stir or resonate with you, dear student, we have succeeded.

When You Lose What You Can't Live Without: Identity Death & Renewal in the Wake of Calamity

—a concise, muscular yet poetic text addressing the sequence of calamity, identity death, life "in the wilderness," renewal and restoration—an ordeal that most of us are obliged to encounter over the course of our lives (usually more than once). These stages are presented in the context of a novel theory of calamitous loss, presented as both unbidden and "bidden." For many, this difficult passage is being compounded by the crushing effects of an economy in peril. When You Lose... offers a road map, and a vision of hope, for all those who are encountering unanticipated rupture and loss, as these may arise in any area of life.

Outside Time: My Friendship with Wilbur

—the stirring account of a relationship forged, over thirty years, on river ice, between a much younger, questing man and an older, atheistic "River Wizard." This unlikely association led inexorably to a post-death pact that was, most wonderfully, honored. The narrative is written as both a paean to a special kind of friendship, and a discriminating inquiry into the whole question regarding the possible continuation of personal consciousness beyond what we call "death."

The Living Oracle: Wisdom & Divination for Everyday Life

—a contemporary oracle designed to introduce the venerable tradition of oracular consultation to a much wider readership. This work features an original, pristine oracular text, contains helpful, fascinating chapters on consulting methodology and "why oracles work," as well as a chapter in which the Oracle prognosticates as to its own future as an oracle ("The Oracle Speaks! [...about itself...]"). A "Table of Correspondences," linking oracular passages to passages from the venerable I Ching, is also included. The Living Oracle can facilitate remarkably fruitful forays into the realm of soul and psyche on the part of its readers and consulters.

Who's At Home in Your Body (When You're Not)?— Essays on Consciousness by a Participant-Observer

—a series of essays based on naturalistic observations on the nature, and functional capacities, of unexceptional states of everyday consciousness across a range of domains. The text is rich with observations that carry intimations of transcendent underpinnings for so many apparently mundane flexations of consciousness, the significance of which, in their unnoticed state, is routinely passed over.

Pathfinding Through Multiple Personality: Personal Reflections & Cumulative Perspectives on Trance, Dissociation, Treatment of Multiple Personality & Related Topics

—a groundbreaking treatment manual for Multiple Personality Disorder (now called Dissociative Identity Disorder), this work provides a comprehensive approach to treatment, including orienting chapters on dissociation and memory. Diagnostic approaches, novel—and highly effective—techniques for working with alter personalities, and a lucid presentation of stages of treatment—along with strategies to address their respective challenges and healing possibilities—are all spelled out in fine detail. This work provides the comprehensive "clinical" overview of the treatment of MPD/DID. It also contributes to a fuller understanding of the structure of human consciousness, including an appreciation of the "multiplicities of everyday life" that inform generic human experience.