Seeking the Compassionate Life : The Moral Crisis for Psychotherapy and Society

The authors take us inside the treatment room, through history, across cultures and into their own personal world to meet clients and acquaintances including a would-be rapist, a virtuous stalker, an adulterous minister, and a young boy with little more than a matchbook and some pride to call his own.

Together, the stories of these clients and historical figures including Nazis at Nuremberg reflect a vital theme: virtuous behaviour should not be a mystery.

Certainly, morality is a subject most ignored and little understood by modern psychological investigation.

Why a person acts honourably, or heinously, is one of the most puzzling and least answered questions of human behaviour.

Admittedly, if we are honest, we must recognize that within every human hatred and arrogance battle compassion and decency as a driving force.

But here we see how people - even unexpected characters - develop altruism and empathy, and learn concern for others.

We are shown seven crucial factors that we must incorporate to achieve a compassionate life.

This book is written for two audiences. First, it questions modern psychological scientists who have ignored the importance of compassion, virtue and morality, focusing on contrived experimental situations rather than pursuing investigations in the actual world in which we live.

Yet it is also written for all people concerned with the moral crisis in contemporary society, and all people seeking personal and social solutions to deal with this crisis.