The Soul of Desire

We are people of desire.In The Soul of Desire, psychiatrist Curt Thompson suggests that underneath all our desires is the desire to be known—and what's more, that this fundamental desire manifests itself in our deep need to make things of beauty, revealing who we are to others. Desire and beauty go hand in hand.But both our desire to be known and our ability to create beauty have been marred by shame and trauma, collapsing our imagination for what God has for us and blinding us to the possibility that beauty could ever emerge from our ashes. Drawing on his work in interpersonal neurobiology and clinical practice, Thompson presents a powerful picture of the capacity of the believing community to reshape our imaginations, and to hold our shame and pain together.The Soul of Desire is a mature, creative work, weaving together psychiatry and spiritual formation to open up new horizons for thinking not only about psychiatry and neurobiology, but about what it means to be human.