The political chaos that is unfolding around us has been a major stimulus for my putting this book together. In the face of increasing numbers of autocratic leaders around the world who are disconnected from moral purpose....

"We learn citizenship skills at a young age, for better or worse. I recently read Finding a Place to Stand: Developing Self-Reflective Institutions, Leaders, and Citizens, by Edward R. Shapiro, M.D...."

"When we are working with other people, from significant others to family groups, to professional teams and other social systems, it's easy to focus on how we are right and how they are wrong...."

I’m a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. I’m a trained listener, having spent more decades than I like to think about trying to learn how to hear. It turns out that listening doesn’t come naturally – I’ve been staggered by learning how difficult it really is.

As we see our country descend into this destructive polarization, how can we use our orientation to bring understanding to the larger social context?

At first, the experience was of enormous relief. The noise might stop. The threat to civil discourse, to reliable institutions, to a recognizable set of values might decrease. A good man is taking the reins.

It was 1995 and the presidential election was coming. I was hired by the Center for National Policy to study voter apathy through interviews of “unaffiliated voters”.

But economic anxiety is never just about economics. The Center for National Policy study, conducted by Dwight Jewson and Edward Shapiro, makes clear that the side effects of economic difficulties may be the most important.

International conflict is marked by powerful feelings, often poorly understood, across cultural and ethnic differences. These feelings emerge around security concerns, economic needs, religious tensions and traumatic pasts and regularly lead to impasse.

The Business Roundtable, America’s foremost association of chief executives, caused a stir when it redefined the purpose of a company, ditching the decades-old orthodoxy that increasing shareholder value should be the only objective.

Steven Rolfe welcomes Dr. Edward Shapiro, who is a training and supervising analyst at the Berkshire Psychoanalytic Institute. He is a former Medical Director and CEO of the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

The struggles we are currently having in America around Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) have been hindered by unconscious group dynamics around representation, race, and authority. How can we gain any perspective on this?