The Problem of Evil: Ancient Dilemmas and Modern Therapy

Review
Eric Greenleaf has not only written a book, he's created a rare opportunity to experience and connect with what makes us human and in that connection realize the power to enlarge, expand and extend goodness in our lives and in the world. In a variety of ways he demonstates what is needed to enlarge the conversation so that the deeper knowing in us all has an opportunity to speak. He presents a therapy that uses words, emotions and story in such a way that they echo down long passageways in our mind and memory, as though the therapist and client go down the passage together and the experience as lived is completed in a surprising incident of healing. Words alone cannot contain what is availble in reading this book. Like C.S. Lewis' Lucy going through the wardrobe or Lewis Carroll's Alice falling down the rabbit hole, you have to experience it - the words are just the doorway. It's brilliant.

By Leslie Johannes (Bellevue, WA United States)

Bridging Troubled Waters

For the curious, this book will help to understand the nature of the mind, and about how healing and transformation work. Greenleaf cites teachers Hannah Arendt, Norman O. Brown, Milton H. Erickson, Lawrence Kohlberg and others at the beginning of his list of acknowlegements. As a psychotherapist, I found it an encyclopedic treasure trove of unexpected psychotherapetic resources. Elegant, brief strategies for dealing with complex problems may at first seem too simple, but Greenleaf reveals the essence of the issues, and explains solutions gleaned from actual case studies in a demonstrably workable way, which one discovers by reading this book. The author draws on classics from many traditions, and employs analysis including unorthodox methodologies that are challenging and thought provoking. If you are a therapist who values the way words are used in the psychotherapeutic process, you may find yourself savoring phrases, word groupigs and new concepts as they are helpfully applied to real, heart-rending case material. This is both a practical and theoretical book, both for oneself, and one's clients. It is a book, that opened at random, can provide material to chew on for days. While concerned with healing the victims of power used in irresponsible ways, it is in reality also an easthetic guide to the logos of the soul that is deeper and more profound than meets the eye.

By Patricia M Gruber (St Thomas, VI USA) - See all my reviews