Understanding Ideology: How Not to Lose Your Mind is a penetrating analysis of how ordinary, decent people can be led into intellectual rigidity, moral blindness, and—at times—quiet forms of personal or political destructiveness. Drawing on over four decades of work as a counselling psychologist, educator, and philosopher, Michael Hardiman shows how personal beliefs are shaped, how they harden into ideological frameworks, and how those frameworks can eithe...

An innate desire to live life with the least amount of pain and the greatest amount of pleasure leaves each person vulnerable to addiction. For many, the reality of their lives is painful. Difficulties in relationships, insecurities, poverty, social isolation, personal unhappiness, and the pressures of modern living-all foster a mental tendency to deny or escape the awareness of pain and discomfort. This book is a very valuable resource for all those ill-informed about the nature of addict...

" An alcoholic family is not a healthy place to grow up in. It is a strange place where very little is as it seems. Emotions fluctuate in a topsy-turvy merry go round. Some days are filled with sadness and loneliness, others are filled with fear as fights erupt between parents, or between child and parent. Then there are days of sentimentality and remorse as the guilty parent tries to make up for all the emotional bruising that goes on. Manipulation and emotional blackmail are everyday occ...

This book explains in detail the forms of dysfunctional/destructive experiences in early formative years that lead to many difficulties in adult life. It explains how this happens and the effects on personality development. It also shows how to recognise the ways these impact on all the major aspects of adult life. More importantly it provides comprehensive guidance as to how these destructive patterns can be identified and how that can be overcome, leading to recovery and better emotional...

'AUTHENTICITY' is a special kind of self-help book. It combines the reflections of the great philosophers with the research findings of personality psychology and presents what I believe is a deeper and more spiritually satisfying approach to personal development than many of the texts available in the current Mind Body Soul market.It describes the kind of thinking and analysis that is necessary if you are to become reflective and insightful in approaching the bigger questions in y...

Most people think evil is rare or incomprehensible. In reality, it takes recurring forms—and because we fail to recognize them, we allow it to take hold again and again.This book shows that human destructiveness is neither random nor confined to extreme individuals, but follows identifiable patterns that emerge across history and in everyday life. When these patterns are not understood, they are misdiagnosed, minimized, or ignored until their consequences become severe. At its core...

The Moral Life: An Antidote to EvilVolume III of the Understanding Human Evil SeriesIf evil is real, and if it takes recurring forms, how can it be resisted?In The Moral Life: An Antidote to Evil, psychologist and philosopher Michael Hardiman argues that the most effective defence against human destructiveness is not found in laws, institutions, or good intentions alone, but in the cultivation of moral character. While evil can never be eli...

We like to believe that evil is rare, incomprehensible, or confined to history. But what if it is a recurring reality of human life?In Evil Is Real, psychologist and philosopher Michael Hardiman examines the nature of evil through the lenses of philosophy, psychology, and history. Challenging the comforting assumption that all wrongdoing can be explained away as ignorance, trauma, or social conditioning, he argues that human beings possess a genuine capacity for destructiv...

The Five Faces of Human EvilVolume II of the Understanding Human Evil SeriesWhy do human beings inflict suffering on one another? Why does evil appear in such different forms, from violent predators and vengeful individuals to ideological fanatics and obedient bureaucrats?In The Five Faces of Human Evil, psychologist and philosopher Michael Hardiman argues that human destructiveness is not random or incomprehensible. Rather, it tends to eme...

On the Southern border of the United States in 2018, the decision was made to implement a separation policy among refugees and migrant families arriving at the border – and so a group of government employees left their homes, bidding farewell to their families as they went to work, and began to separate hundreds of children from their families, forcefully taking them to holding centres. Developing Hannah Arendt’s analysis of the banality of evil, The Path to Mass Evil demonstrates...

A "lucid, careful, tenacious, and always accessible" inquiry into practical morality for everyday life by the author of The Roots of Evil ( Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews).For centuries, moral philosophers have sought a single, overriding ideal that should guide everyone, always, everywhere. And after centuries of debate we're no closer to arriving at one. In How Should We Live?, philosopher John Kekes offers a refreshing alternative, e...

"Even more valuable than its widely praised predecessor, The Culture of Narcissism." —John W. AldridgeFaced with an escalating arms race, rising crime and terrorism, environmental deterioration, and long-term economic decline, people have retreated from commitments that presuppose a secure and orderly world. In his latest book, Christopher Lasch, the renowned historian and social critic, powerfully argues that self-concern, so characteristic of our time, h...