Hi,
Life has put me in a wonderful situation. I am volunteering for a charity and I am interacting with a lot of persons who haven’t been too lucky: hobos, male and female prostitutes, drug addicts, ex-convicted criminals, alcoholics… you name it, I meet them.
My only job is to serve them food. I don’t want to change any of their lives, I don’t want to play “saviour” or “hero”. At all. They have their dignity to choose their ways in life and I respect that.
I have found though that they really appreciate it when you just hear their stories and feel related. Also known as empathy.
I haven’t studied any psychology course or anything at all. But I want to “cheat” in order to understand them better. So I would like you to help me to “cheat”.
I consider this a big opportunity to learn about the human being and, ultimately, about myself.
I haven’t got the time to do a psychology course. But I would like to make the best of my time with them. I would like to extract as much information and teachings from them as I can. I would like to get to know why they have been drawn to that situation. I would like to understand them better, in order to see in them the mirror reflecting our common human nature.
So.
I would like to ask you for some excellent books on human nature, behaviour and psychology. Those full of insights, tips, knowledge and wisdom. In a kind of “cookbook” fashion.
For instance, written in this style:
- “A weak father and strong mother, with an unresolved Oedipus complex will lead to a weak, and then homosexual, son, because the mother has too strong of an image, compared to the weak state of the father. Psychologists argue that this same arrangement would also possibly lead to a stronger son, striving for compensation of his father’s weakness.”
Taken from: allpsych.com/journal/homosexuality.html
I know, nobody can expect to get the equivalent of a PhD by just reading some dozen books.
But I’m sure you get my point.