Alfonso Montuori, one of my professors at CIIS, has identified three styles, or modes, of learning, which he calls the narcissistic, the reproductive, and the creative. From his article, The Quest for a New Education, From Oppositional Identities to Creative Inquiry, narcissistic learning is "an approach to education that sees the source of knowledge as...

The role of destruction, and of the working out of polarities, is a subject that has been dealt with an the alchemical tradition for a very long time.  Alchemically, it is understood that the issue you are dealing with, in which you find yourself (the prima materia) MUST go through a process of putrefaction, of...