In the 68 years since Vita Activa, Hannah Arendt's treatise on the nature of labour, work, and artistic creation, the three core activities have undergone and continue to undergo profound transformation. We present here a sustained, open-minded critical reflection on how we live and who we are, as a species. Our earthbound wisdom – individually and collectively informs our experience of soul-making and the world we share with other living beings. The kernel of the present work is that psychotherapy as lived attention, from person to person, needs to include in its corpus, its claim to heal, the issues and suffering which we confront in our present-day conditions, as the basis of our existence. In this book then we take a fresh look at the meaning of human labour, work, and artistic creation. This approach to human misery and well-being casts fresh light on the work of psychologists, psychotherapists and mental health professionals and their ostensible commitment to alleviate mental and emotional distress by benign means.
