ABSTRACT
Published in the Psychiatric Times in February 1997 as Looking for Raffaela's Hug," this piece was intended to be the afterword to my book, The Helper's Dilemma, which is devoted to the evolutionary/genetic theory of "reciprocal altruism" and its implications for psychotherapy. I never sold the book to anyone, but I love this essay just the same.
"Raffaela" takes the Tragic view of our therapeutic enterprise, looking at the inevitable limitations of professionalized dyadic helping in our modern, mass culture.
