In any event, Bradshaw's RECLAIMING VIRTUE is reader friendly, including an ample index. From cover to cover, the sentences and paragraphs in the fifteen chapters of this ambitious book are clearly written and accessible. Each chapter is divided into bite-sized subsections introduced by suitable subheadings. However, even people who are familiar with Bradshaw's thought in his previous books may find this 500-page text daunting to read because of the sheer number of topics covered in the various subsections. Slow reading may be the best approach to reading this book.
Bradshaw's new 500-page magnum opus is his grand synthesis of what he has learned during his life from his own personal experience as an alcoholic, from his professional experiences as a teacher and as a psychotherapist, and from his extensive reading. As a teacher, Bradshaw has mastered the rather extensive body of reading material about which he writes.
As the subtitle of Bradshaw's book intimates, Aristotle's NICOMACHEAN ETHICS is one of the anchors and cornerstones of Bradshaw's book. For example, Bradshaw quotes Aristotle on page 51: "Anybody can become angry that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way that is not within everybody's power and is not easy."
Mutatis mutandi, anybody can be helpful that is easy, but to be helpful with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way that is not within everybody's power and is not easy. Nevertheless, this is exactly the kind of help that psychotherapists and spiritual directors hope to provide the individual persons they work with.
Do you get the idea? In short, deliberate virtuous acts represent the excellence of human flourishing, because virtue represents the developed strength of human nature. Centuries before Paul the Apostle and Augustine of Hippo conspired to produce the Christian doctrine of original sin, ancient Greeks such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle understood that we humans are not born virtuous. As a result, we need to cultivate virtue.
Regarding anger, Bradshaw himself makes his own distinctive contribution to our understanding of anger when he says that "anger must be tempered by healthy shame" (page 180). Unfortunately, many of us do not have a healthy sense of shame. Instead, we have an unhealthy sense of shame, which Bradshaw refers to as toxic shame.
Toxic shame skews not only our expression of anger but also our expression of other emotions as well. Bradshaw's central claim is that toxic shame binds our emotions. In plain English, our emotions are frozen in the past. As a result, "we overreact or react in other inappropriate ways" not only with respect to anger but also with respect to other emotions as well (page 249). Thus we do not do the right thing at the right time for the right reason.
To be able to do the right thing at the right time for the right reason deliberately and habitually, we must overcome the various problems associated with toxic shame. But how can we proceed to do this? According to Bradshaw, the key to overcoming our toxic shame is grief work, which produces intrapsychic restructuring of our psyches. Even though he does not happen to mention the work of George H. Pollock, M.D., Ph.D., regarding grief work, the very title of the two-volume collection of Pollock's essays about grief work, THE MOURNING-LIBERATION PROCESS (1989), supports the claim that healthy grief work does produce intrapsychic restructuring of the psyche.
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