About Human Goodness

Through twelve essays, this book synthesizes the psychoanalytic literature on human goodness: happiness, motivation, kindness, forgiveness, etc. Human goodness and the associated psychic phenomena are essential trajectories of mental health and well-being, towards which an ethical psychoanalytic work should ultimately strive. This book attempts to bring together the relatively limited and scattered psychoanalytic literature on these phenomena; to synthesize, analyze, and narrate the main ideas of that literature; and to discuss these ideas with personal reflections on each topic. It presents twelve essays, each on a book that related to an aspect of goodness: Kindness, Gentleness, Commitment, Passion, Love, Forgiveness, Happiness, Dignity, Playfulness, Spontaneity, Curiosity, and Faith, with an outro on Gratitude. This book will be of interest to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists, professionals and students in mental health, and, more broadly, to readers in psychology, sociology, philosophy, and other humanitarian sciences.