What we are and may become as persons, Dr Nutting contends, is precisely our relationships. He challenges a long-term mindset endemic in psychiatry and psychology, namely, the presumption to label deviations from statistical norms' as pathology. Key to recovery from psychiatric diagnosis trauma, he argues, is truly respectful human relationships. Nutting himself was assigned Asperger`s Syndrome'. A way of understanding personality in relationships is the Enneagram, an analytic spiritual psychology model, still controversial whilst growing in influence. Here its power to elucidate the dynamics of difficult and healing relationships is tested against the author`s seventy-odd years` life-experience as child, adult, patient, psychiatric chaplain and academic.

In his chapter on the procedure for the reception of new brothers, Saint Benedict makes provision for entrusting them to the care of "a senior who is skilled in winning souls who will diligently pay attention to them in everything" (58.6). In The Art of Winning Souls: Pastoral Care of Novices, Michael Casey, OCSO, reflects on what this means today, based on his own experience and observation of the fruitful ministry of others. Here Casey focuses on the pastoral care given in the name of a monastic community to those who enter it, from initial contact up to the point where their vocation has recognizably stabilized. His reflections are not intended to be prescriptive. They are, rather, descriptive of what he considers to be best practice, as he has encountered this in his experience of many different expressions of the monastic and Benedictine charism. This book promises to serve as an indispensable resource for vocation directors, novice directors, and junior directors for years to come.