Contrary to popular "how-to" guides for becoming a better person no book holds the key to true humanness or real happiness. In The Art of Becoming Human, Dr. Mercer explains what is required for personal growth, details the aspects of life that touch us profoundly, and lays out the choices that can lead to the highest state of humanness attainable.
Early childhood love is for things: milk, honey, warm blankets. Our second love is for people. Eventually the people gradually become more important than the things they provide. This pattern and pain of love and separation repeats itself throughout our lives until, if we're lucky, our desire to be loved becomes a desire to love. The person who truly loves, as opposed to being "in love," is able to take the first step toward becoming a genuine human being who embraces love and separation when each is called for.
The Art of Becoming Human is augmented with eloquent quotations from literary classics, revealing the universal self-creative pattern that lies beneath the surface of individual life.
Mary F. Mercer, M.D. (Nyack, NY), with more than fifty years experience as a child psychiatrist, although semi-retired, continues to see many former patients.
146 pp ISBN 1-57392-120-3 Cloth