This book explores the possibility of grounding the idea of human excellence, which has traditionally been associated with hierarchical systems, on an ecological structuring of the psyche. Riker bases his concept on recent work in psychoanalytic theory, emotion theory, sociobiology, ethnogenic social psychology, and feminism, as well as on the insights of such philosophers as Aristotle, Nietzsche, Whitehead, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein.

Drawing from Kohut's conceptualisation of self, Riker sets out how contemporary America's formulation of persons as autonomous, self-sufficient individuals is deeply injurious to the development of a vitalizing self-structure—a condition which lies behind much of the mental illness and social malaise of today's world. By carefully attending to Kohut's texts, Riker explains the structural, functional, and dynamic dimensions of Kohut's concept of the self. He creatively extends this concept to show how the self can be conceived of as an erotic striving for connectedness, beauty, and harmony, separate from the ego. Riker uses this distinction to reveal how social practices of contemporary American society foster skills and traits to advance the aims of the ego for power and control, but tend to suppress the needs of the self to authentically express its ideals and connect with others. The book explores the impact that this view can have on clinical practice, and concludes by imaginatively constructing an ideal self-psychological society, using Plato's Republic as a touchstone. Informed by self psychology and philosophy, this book is essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and philosophers, seeking to revisit and revise constructions of both self and humanity.

Ethics, Love, and Faith in Kierkegaard collects essays from 13 leading scholars that center on key themes that characterize Kierkegaard's philosophy of religion. With their unique focus on notions of the self, views on the command to love one's neighbor, thoughts on melancholy and despair, and the articulation of religious vision, the essays in this volume cover the breadth and depth of Kierkegaard's philosophical and religious writings. Poised at the intersection of Kierkegaard's moral psychology and its religious significance, they offer vivid testimony to the ongoing power of his unique and fervent religious spirit. Students and scholars alike will find new light shed on questions that define Kierkegaard's philosophy and religion today.

In this book, John Hanwell Riker develops and expands the conceptual framework of self psychology in order to offer contemporary readers a naturalistic ground for adopting an ethical way of being in the world. Riker stresses the need to find a balance between mature narcissism and ethics, to address and understand differences among people, and to reconceive social justice as based on the development of individual self. This book is recommend for readers interested in psychology and philosophy, and for those who wonder what it means to be human in the modern age.

Volume 12 of the Progress in Self Psychology series begins with reassessments of frustration and responsiveness, optimal and otherwise, by MacIsaac, Bacal and Thomson, the Shanes, and Doctors. The philosophical dimension of self psychology is addressed by Riker, who looks at Kohut's bipolar theory of the self, and Kriegman, who examines the subjectivism-objectivism dialectic in self psychology from the standpoint of evolutionary biology. Clinical studies focus on self- and mutual regulation in relation to therapeutic action, countertransference and the curative process, and the consequences of the negative selfobject in early character formation. A separate section of child studies includes a case study exemplifying a self-psychological approach to child therapy and an examination of pathological adaptation to childhood parent loss. With a concluding section of richly varied studies in applied self psychology, Basic Ideas Reconsidered promises to be basic reading for all students of contemporary self psychology.

This book shows why the discovery of the unconscious by Nietzsche and Freud requires a reconception of the concepts of moral agency and responsibility and even of morality itself. It explicates how contemporary psychology has taken over the traditional task of ethics in elucidating a theory of human well-being, but criticizes this psychology for being unable to generate adequate notions of either responsibility or moral agency. Riker develops a new moral psychology in which the reality of unconscious functioning is included within a theory of responsibility, and the agent's primary ethic concern becomes knowing what her unconscious motivations are and integrating them into a morally and psychologically mature self.

In this remarkable book, Gary Wright focuses thirty years’ experience as a family physician, and his Ph.D. in philosophy, to address the nature of good medical reasoning. Wright folds cognitive science into a pragmatist framework developed by John Dewey; this alternative view of mind and medical judgment leads to a model of reasoning that offers realistic guidance for medical decisions, one that each of us would want our own physicians to adopt.