Amazon.com Review
Kathleen Brehony, a Jungian clinical psychiatrist, refuses to believe that acts of kindness are exceptional or even random. Instead, she offers testimony to the instinctual human desire to be compassionate, forgiving, merciful, and tolerant. Brehony offers real-life stories to demonstrate the tenacity and pervasiveness of ordinary grace and altruism. She takes us into the homes of everyday heroes, such as a New Jersey couple who adopted four HIV-infected children from a Romanian orphanage. We enter inner-city neighborhoods and small-town high schools and find out that the plight of today's youth is not all doom and gloom, as the media would suggest. In fact, many teens are spiritually thriving as a result of their own acts of kindness--the tutoring they offer younger children or the food they deliver to their elders.
If you're looking for an antedote to the daily barrage of cynical and pessimistic claims about human nature, this will do the trick. There's even a chapter devoted to showing readers how to create more grace in everyday life. Through strong storytelling supported by extensive research, Brehony makes a convincing case for the inborn and sacred goodness of humanity. --Gail Hudson
From Publishers Weekly
In an attempt to discover what motivates and inspires altruism in some people, Jungian-oriented clinical psychologist and psychotherapist Brehony (Awakening at Midlife) offers examples of human graciousness in matters large and small. She tells of organ donation between casual acquaintances, of organizations started by those in grief that now help thousands struggling with similar losses, of individuals who have devoted their lives to bringing aid to others. Unfortunately, no matter how heartwarming, her finding that people can choose to act helpfully and generously rather than according to their less benevolent instincts seems too simplistic: "Each of us has the power to determine what he or she chooses to tune in to." Brehony briefly discusses the Jungian concept of our shadow side, the dark opposite of our daily, public persona. In her view, finding grace in our own lives is possible by becoming aware of the presence of our shadow side and opening ourselves to others. Readers seeking reassurance that people can be good as easily as not will find inspiration in these personal stories; they may even be motivated to their own good deeds by Brehony's "strategies" for grace at the close of the book ("Be prepared for pain as well as joy," "Simplify and scale down"). Agent, Lisa Ross.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
