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Among the burning issues of our day none approach the urgency of the question whether man can survive. Modern science and technology have equipped man with the means for immediate and total destruction. How can he be expected not to make use of them? And even if he should be so constrained, isn't he likely to contaminate and befoul this earth so as to make it uninhabitable? His waging of wars does not end and his cruelty has reached new heights in our lifetime. His runaway uncontrolled birthrate upsets all plans for the future. We simply will not be able to provide the basic necessities of life for our descendants. We will not, that is, unless we change our ways. If we succeed in doing that, we may be able to solve many of the problems that threaten our survival. We may, just may, conceivably, succeed.
But if such success is possible, doesn't it mean that man might have succeeded at past endeavors which were failures and that he might hope to succeed at future ones as yet undreamt of? It means that man is able to change his ways, to make choices, to exert his will.
This is the framework of Silvano Arieti's newest book. It deals with man's nature, his endowment, powers, aims and goals, glories and curses. It is philosophical in its approach, but not utopian. It uses the clinician's scalpel, his keen powers of observation, and his rational orderliness. Yet it also is the work of a poet, much of it written in beautiful prose that causes joy, as it elicits understanding. It is a work on morality and ethics written by a psychoanalyst and a book on psychiatry written by a humanist. It is a candid piece of writing, portions of which are autobiographical in which the author does not spare himself. He comes across the pages such as he is in person: clear of eye, critical, incorruptible, yet endowed with a warm heart, knowledgeable, erudite and inquisitive but never grandiloquent; modest, humble, deeply honest, dedicated and sincere, also exceedingly bright and—most importnt—cr