The Courage to Love: Principles and Practices of Self-Relations Psychotherapy

Book excerpt: This is a book about how psychotherapy may be used to cultivate the courage and freedom to love. In a time when love seems to be fading and hatred and despair rising, it presents love as a skill and force that can heal and invigorate, reconnect and guide, calm and encourage. In Gilligan's self-relations approach, psychotherapy is a conversation about competing differences. When these differences are treated violently or indifferently, problems arise; solutions develop when the skills of love are practiced. Those practical skills are described here, with an emphasis on postconventional ethics, Buddhist and aikido principles, and ideas of human sponsorship.