A quarter of a century listening to peoples" stories in the consulting room is captured in this fascinating record. Some stories begin sadly but most end happily, and all give insights into what it means to be human. The complex dynamics of families and partners has its impact and early experiences play themselves out in later life, while fashionable ideas often serve only to obscure the obvious. Meanwhile racism, feminism, politics and war surge in the outside world. Yet humanity can still triumph, people can learn new, more positive ways of looking at their lives and some discover a spirituality they did not know they had. By warmth and wisdom this book, written by a psychotherapist working in the British Independent Tradition, leads the sympathetic reader to an altogether better place.