ABSTRACT
Paul Gilbert brings together an international line-up of leading scholars and researchers in the field to provide a state-of-the-art exploration of key areas in compassion research and applications. Compassion can be seen as a core element of prosocial behaviour, and explorations of the concepts and value of compassion have been extended into different aspects of life including physical and psychological therapies, schools, leadership and business.
While many animals share abilities to be distress sensitive and caring of others, it is our newly evolved socially intelligent abilities that make us capable of knowingly and deliberately helping others and purposely developing skills and wisdom to do so. This book generates many research questions whilst exploring the similarity and differences of human compassion to non-human caring and looks at how compassion changes the brain and body, affects genetic expression, manifests at a young age and is then cultivated (or not) by the social environment.
Compassion: Concepts, Research and Applications will be essential reading for professionals, researchers and scholars interested in compassion and its applications in psychology and psychotherapy.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|86 pages
Evolution and the nature of compassion
part II|84 pages
Compassion and its physiologies
chapter 6|15 pages
The psychobiological foundation of prosocial relationships
part III|47 pages
Compassion and relationships
part IV|67 pages
Applying compassion