Compassion And Calculation

5. Northern Lights: David Sogge

Comprises seven papers which focus on crises currently besetting private aid agencies. Topics covered include: the ownership and accountability of private aid agencies, the purpose and Motivation of the agencies and the need for a more businesslike structure and culture, and the performance and impact of the agencies.

Social Workers and Compassion is designed to assist social work students, social workers, social work managers, social care workers, and lecturers in developing knowledge, understanding, skills, and values related to various aspects of compassion. Focussing on social work in the UK, the various elements of compassion – compassion, compassion fatigue, compassion satisfaction, self-care, self-compassion, and mindfulness – are clearly located in a systemic, organisational, and structural context. The chapters draw upon evidence-based and evidence-informed sources and present critical perspectives that are linked to existing practices in social work education, social work, and the author’s own experiences. Drawing upon literature from social work and health care, social, organisational, work, and positive psychology, and from sociology and social policy from various parts of the world, the book will be of interest to international social work readers as well as professionals and professionals in training in the criminal justice, health care, counselling, and clinical psychology fields. It will be essential reading for social work students, lecturers, social care workers, social workers, and their managers.

There are many people across the planet who work every day for the sake of others but who are ensconced in exhausting work with dangerous and difficult situations of conflict. These people are often heroic bridge-builders and creators of peaceful societies, and they have a common set of cultivated moral character traits and psychosocial skills. They tend to be kinder, more reasonable, more self-controlled, and more goal-oriented to peace. They are united by a particular set of moral values and the emotional skills to put those values into practice. The aim of this book is to articulate the best combination of those values and skills that lead to personal and communal sustainability, not burnout and self-destruction. The book pivots on the observable difference in the mind-and proven in neuroscience imaging experiments-between destructive empathic distress, on the one hand, and, on the other, joyful, constructive, compassionate care. .

In Compassion, ten scholars draw on literature, psychoanalysis, and social history to provide an archive of cases and genealogies of compassion. Together these essays demonstrate how "being compassionate" is shaped by historical specificity and social training, and how the idea of compassion takes place in scenes that are anxious, volatile, surprising, and even contradictory.

What is compassion, how does it affect the quality of our lives and how can we develop compassion for ourselves and others? Humans are capable of extreme cruelty but also considerable compassion. Often neglected in Western psychology, this book looks at how compassion may have evolved, and is linked to various capacities such as sympathy, empathy, forgiveness and warmth. Exploring the effects of early life experiences with families and peers, this book outlines how developing compassion for self and others can be key to helping people change, recover and develop ways of living that increase well-being. Focusing on the multi-dimensional nature of compassion, international contributors: explore integrative evolutionary, social constructivist, cognitive and Buddhist approaches to compassion consider how and why cruelty can flourish when our capacities for compassion are turned off, especially in particular environments focus on how therapists bring compassion into their therapeutic relationship, and examine its healing effects describe how to help patients develop inner warmth and compassion to help alleviate psychological problems. Compassion provides detailed outlines of interventions that are of particular value to psychotherapists and counsellors interested in developing compassion as a therapeutic focus in their work. It is also of value to social scientists interested in pro-social behaviour, and those seeking links between Buddhist and Western psychology.

Articulates the necessity for a comprehensive reconstructive thinking about the meaning of being good.

Feminist trajectories -- Global responsibilities -- Bridging distance -- Interlocking connections -- Post-colonial configurations