Integrity, morality, ethics - do they still have a viable place in our lives? Today, most people are apt to associate these issues with overzealous religious or political leaders, the opportunistic media, or dry-minded academicians. The serious social problems that we face at our own fin-de-siecle have made us desperate for an escape from the moral quicksand where we have strayed, without an understanding of how we arrived here or how we can pull free.

A Crisis of Spirit: Our Desperate Search for Integrity clears a straightforward path through this moral thicket, revealing the real reasons for the death of integrity in our country. Beginning with a fascinating look at the "evolution" of integrity in Western culture, Dr. Anita Spencer, an esteemed clinical psychologist, explores the social and psychological underpinnings of America's integrity crisis and the major reasons we are unable to commit ourselves to action and change.

Taking us on an enlightening tour of the twentieth-century psyche, she explains some of the complex forces that have driven us to our current point of isolation and reveals the relationships among rugged individualism, reckless consumerism, and popular psychology.

The author also looks at the social and psychological reasons why we feel so powerless to better our society - why Americans long for the "community" of yesteryear but do not know how (or if) we can recreate it. Taking a controversial stand, Dr. Spencer advises us to reconsider popular psychology's definition of happiness as self-fulfillment, urging us instead to invest time and energy in improving our world.

Introducing a concept she calls "the dual nature of the person," she convincingly explains why we must learn to reconcile our own individual needs with the needs of our communities.