To Thine Own Self Be True: The Relationship Between Spiritual Values and Emotional Health

by Lewis M. Andrews

Overview

A seminal work on ethical therapy and the vital connection between responsibility, personal values, and peace of mind.

“To Thine Own Self Be True is one of the most valuable, enlightening books I have read.”—Hugh Prather, author of Notes to Myself
 
For some, conventional psychotherapy just isn’t enough. In To Thine Own Self Be True, Dr. Lewis M. Andrews debunks the cultural stigma that says being religious is antithetical to being logical or scientific, and explains how incorporating spirituality and traditional ethical values into therapy can lead to a deeper understanding of your true self. 
 
“[To Thine Own Self Be True] cannot help but affect the reader profoundly, both personally and professionally.”—Pennsylvania Psychologist

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780307768650
Publisher:	Crown Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/15/2010
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Lewis M. Andrews, PhD, holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Princeton, a Master’s in Communications Research from Stanford, and a PhD in Social Psychology from the Union Institute. He has been a research fellow at Yale University and a visiting scholar at the Columbia University graduate school of business. He is the founder and former chair of the Children’s Educational Opportunity Foundation, a privately funded scholarship program for poor and minority children in Hartford, Bridgeport, and New Haven, Connecticut; and for ten years he was the executive director of the Yankee Institute for Public Policy at Trinity College, Hartford. Dr. Andrews has authored many popular and professional works, including To Thine Own Self Be True (Doubleday). His articles have appeared in the Saturday Review, the Wall Street Journal, and the Nation.

Editorial Reviews

Compulsive eating to fill an inner void, the use of anger as a pretext to punish others, the perpetual muddle of the indecisive person, self-defeating resentmentthese behavior patterns illustrate that an ethical dimension frequently lies at the core of emotional problems, stresses the author. Ethical therapists, part of a burgeoning movement, deal with patients' neuroses in moral and spiritual terms. Unlike psychoanalysts, who are apt to view guilt as an irrational feeling, the ethical therapist instead investigates what a person is feeling guilty about. In this system, anxiety may be a positive developmenta sign that a person's deep intuitive widsom is demanding change. Andrews, a psychologist and author of Biofeedback, traces the ethical approach back to Plato. His book also offers advice on how to alleviate boredom, depression, frustration, fears, loneliness, addiction and feelings of worthlessness. (August 7)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Andrews, a psychologist in private practice, is a lapsed behaviorist now advocating an alternative approach to non-normative forms of conventional therapy. His approach parallels developments emerging in journalism, health care, and other professions where the study of ethics is in favor once again. Andrews both pleads for practitioners to acknowledge the ineffectiveness of those traditional value-free therapies that merely consider the patient as victim and recommends a few practical techniques that can strengthen our intuitive convictions regarding guilt, boredom, indecision, worthlessness, anxiety, and addiction. Unexamined assumptions and a lack of discussion about the more challenging theories of applied ethics do not detract from the wholesome advice given in this accessible book. William Abrams, Portland State Univ. Lib., Ore.

Library Journal