The transparent self created by Sidney M. Jourard

Includes bibliographical references and index

Self-disclosure and the mysterious other -- The beginnings of self-disclosure: a personal narrative -- Health personality and self-disclosure -- Some lethal aspects of the male role -- Sex and self-disclosure in marriage -- The experience and disclosure of love -- Self-disclosure, the writer, and his reader -- The need for privacy -- Sickness as protest -- Spirit and wellness -- The invitation to die -- Reinventing marriage and the family -- Education, for a new society -- Psychedelic drugs: the impotent protest -- An invitation to authenticity -- Dialogue versus manipulation in counseling and psychotherapy -- Resistance to authenticity in the psychotherapist -- The psychotherapist as exemplar -- Self-disclosure and the "encounter group" leader -- The "manners" of helpers and healers: the bedside manner of nurses -- Patients are persons as well as disease-packages -- To whom can a nurse give personalized care? -- A research approach to self-disclosure -- Some findings in the study of self-disclosure -- Possible points of departure for research in spirit

Throughout history, the author maintains, man has chosen the road of concealment rather than "openness", a route that all too often results in sickness, misunderstanding and alienation from self. The author explores the implications of a new premise: man can attain health and fullest personal development only insofar as he gains courage to be himself with others and only when he finds goals that have meaning for him, goals which include the reshaping of society so that it is fit for all to live and grow in