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About this book
If the truth be known, I am only a partially reformed idealist. In the secret depths of my soul, I still wish to make the world a better place and sometimes fantasize about heroically eradicating its faults. When I encounter its limitations, it is consequently with deep regret and continued surprise. How, I ask myself, is it possible that that which seems so fight can be a chimera? And why, I wonder, aren't people as courageous, smart, or nice as I would like? The pain of realizing these things is sometimes so intense that I want to close my eyes and lose myself in the kinds of daydreams that comforted me as a youngster. One thing is clear, my need to come to grips with my idealism had its origin in a lifetime of naivet6. From the beginning, I wanted to be a "good" person. Often when life was most treacherous, I retreated into a comer from whence I escaped into reveries of moral glory. When I was very young, my faith was in religion. In Hebrew school, I took my lessons seriously and tried to apply them at home. By my teen years, this had been replaced by an allegiance to socialism. In the Brooklyn where I grew up, my teachers and relatives made this seem the natural course. When I reached my twenties, however, and was obliged to confront a series of personal deficiencies, psychotherapy shouldered its way to the fore.
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Table of contents (9 chapters)
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Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Limits of Idealism
Book Subtitle: When Good Intentions Go Bad
Authors: Melvyn L. Fein
Series Title: Clinical Sociology: Research and Practice
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/b102607
Publisher: Springer New York, NY
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eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive
Copyright Information: Springer Science+Business Media New York 1999
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-306-46211-5Published: 31 October 1999
Softcover ISBN: 978-1-4757-7213-5Published: 08 March 2013
eBook ISBN: 978-0-585-29601-2Published: 28 August 2007
Series ISSN: 1566-7847
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIV, 265
Topics: Sociology, general, Education, general, Business and Management, general, Public Health