Shame & Guilt Ernest Kurtz

Ernest Kurtz, Shame & Guilt, second edition, revised and updated, February 2007, 53 pp. Soon to appear in print. Click here to read online (the file is 108 Kbytes and may take time to download on a dial-up connection). Originally published as Shame and Guilt: Characteristics of the Dependency Cycle (A Historical Perspective for Professionals). Center City, Minnesota: Hazelden; 1981. Particularly in its new and revised version this little book, though short, is one of the best and most insightful works ever written on the sense of shame -- feeling bad about our lives and what we perceive as our failures -- that inner pain which haunts so many alcoholics and addicts and so many other human beings. And from his deep wisdom and accumulated experience, Kurtz also tells us how the twelve step program can be used to heal that sense of worthlessness and fear of abandonment, and restore us to lives that are happy, joyous, and free.

By the author of Not-God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous, originally published in 1979 and still the classic work on the subject.

Kurtz, who holds a Ph.D. from Harvard, is one of the top people from A.A.'s second generation of authors (the generation following Bill W., Richmond Walker, Ed Webster, and Father Ralph Pfau).

His book on the spiritual life is equally well known and has also been an enduring best seller through the years: Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham, The Spirituality of Imperfection: Modern Wisdom from Classic Stories.

Some of the most important of his many articles and essays can be found in Ernest Kurtz, The Collected Ernie Kurtz (Wheeling, West Virginia: Bishop of Books, 1999).

Source: AAHistoryLovers February 14, 2007