This provocative, eye-opening book exposes the negative side of our cultural and personal preoccupation. Psychologist Lind suggests that there are no alternatives to seeking because our culture is singularly obsessed with it. Yet, the consequences are many. We are at war with ourselves because internal conflict, the manipulation of others, and personal suffering are the natural outcomes of seeking to change the self.
Updating the wisdom of two millennia, Lind suggests that self-transformation can only occur if we are able to stop interfering with the experience of who we naturally are. Rather than advocating without qualification the value of "growth", "development", and "progress" (as does other psychology,self-help, and new age literature), he locates internal conflict -- the core concept of mental illness since Freud -- in the futile and self-destructive seeking of the modern self.
