PAUL STANDISH is Professor of Educational Studies, University of Sheffield, UK.PAUL SMEYERS is Professor of Education at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium.RICHARD SMITH is Professor of Education at the University of Durham, UK.

'At a time when it seems that everyone, at whatever level of society, has fallen behind the banner of Business, blindly caught up in its ruthless and deadening rationality, it is such a relief to find writers so able to resist the trend. They remind us of a humane culture we seem to have forgotten, and their intelligent and illuminating understanding of the relations between education and 'therapy' sweeps away many of the absurdities that have over the past two or three decades invaded both.' David Smail former Special Professor in Clinical Psychology at the University of Nottingham, and author of Illusion and Reality: the Meaning of Anxiety and Taking Care: an Alternative to Therapy.

• Introduction: The Aims of Therapy and the Aims of Education PART I: THE KINDLY APOCALYPSE Self-Esteem Learning to Change Building the Team: Showing not Saying PART II: COMING TO TERMS Learning Room Eliminating Risk Development and the Revival of the Self PART III: REDEEMING PHILOSOPHY Ordinary Lives: Enlarging the Enigma Work for the Psyche Narrative and Numbers: What Really Counts