About Human Goodness

Through twelve essays, this book synthesizes the psychoanalytic literature on positive emotions of human goodness.

Psychoanalysis's goal as an ethical practice is to ultimately foster human goodness through mental health and wellbeing. About Human Goodness: Essays on Emergent Psychoanalytic Literature brings together the relatively limited and scattered psychoanalytic literature on human goodness and positive emotions; 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 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.