Book review editorial: Human goodness

The founder of psychoanalysis had a dismal view of the true nature of human beings. He darkly noted that most people were “good for nothing in life” (Freud, 1904, p. 264), that most “friends of humanity and protectors of animals have evolved from little sadists” (Freud, 1915, p. 282), that the masses are “antisocial and anticultural” (Freud, 1927, p. 7) at their core, and the idea of human goodness was an “evil illusion” (Freud, 1933, p. 104). Thankfully, later psychoanalysts moved away from Freud's cynicism and began to highlight admirable, kind, and overall “good” aspects of human nature. In one edited (Akhtar, 2009) and two solo-authored (Akhtar, 2013, 2019), I have covered this emergent “new” literature and thoroughly elucidated the origins, nature, pathological variants, and therapeutic role of positive personality attributes including courage, curiosity, dignity, forgiveness, generosity, gratitude, humility, intimacy, patience, privacy, resilience, and sacrifice. The reviews in this issue of Stokoe's book on curiosity and Barnea-Astrog's book on gentleness, by the thoughtful Latvian psychiatrist, Glebs Troscenkov, continue this new, charitable, and optimistic turn in psychoanalysis much further.