David Brazier has done well to present this clear description of his other-centred therapy which can come to the aid of a relationshiip suffering some form of disappointment and frustration. It is a book for all of us, whether professional or lay, eastern or western. ~ Christine Hackett, Renew

Mainly aimed at practicioners, but contains much of interest for the general reader. ~ Network Review

I can recommend this book to members of the 'psychotherapy community', be they practitioners or 'therapees'.  If one is already familiar to that world and its culture, there is much in this book to stimulate reflection, especially about the nature of the relationship between therapist and client.

This book may be a little advanced to absolute beginners studying counselling, but I believe it is a book which will provide new insight each time it is read, and will enrich those who read it. 

Love and Its Disappointment is inspirational.  It provokes us to think differently about human functioning, our relationship with love, frustration, creativity and spirituality.  Whilst focussing on the art of psychology it is not only relevant to psychotherapists, but all us, whatever our practise, denomination or cultural origin. 

I enjoyed it enormously; the only drawback was my own lack of literary and philosophy knowledge.   

This book outlines a really useful new position on centrally important points in psychology ~ Mary Midgely, philosopher and author of 'Wickedness'

A very interesting and compelling book. It feels like a power house of thought that has been building up over a long time and successfully found its voice, as it successfully pulled me the reader along. The clarity of the author's 'voice' and thought is rare indeed. His overall thesis that we are motivated by love, the inherent irony of existence - that as loving beings we are inevitably thwarted, and how we manage that - and how art and therapy can help us think about them, process them, inform us and occasionally heal us finds a way of saying what I have felt, in a much more incoherent way, for a long time. His skill at drawing on other theorists, writers, philosophers, and his own thinking and integrating it into one clear treatise is brilliant. Brazier's idea of the other will engage my thinking for sometime to come and the risk he takes in standing up and banging the drum for love as the main motivation in man, is both convincing and lays bare our defences against it, and of course its frustration. ~ Julia Samuel, Metanoia Institute Tutor, Honorary Fellow of Imperial College

In Love and Disappointment, as in his classic work Zen Therapy, David Brazier calls us to see what is at the core of life in refreshing, vitalizing ways. This time he takes on the interpersonal "dance" we call "relationship" offers new insights that seminal thinker Carl Rogers might have offered himself if he were alive today to extend his theory to meet the modern momentum of psychotherapy. It is thought provoking, nourishing of the inner life, and ideal reflective material for both professionals and searchers seeking to live "the honourable life" rather than merely drift on the surface of life. In essence, this book is about the possibility of love in a world that fails to really recognize the true import of its motivating force. Brazier's approach not only educates and helps us think differently but also, in Iris Murdoch's words, it " inspires love in the part of us that is most worthy." What more can you ask of a book than this? ~ Robert Wicks, Catholic, author of Riding the Dragon (Sorin Books) and The Resilient Clinician (Oxford University Press) Professor, Loyola University, Maryland

This is just what we need: a psychology based not on raw sex, or power, or fear, or mystical obscurantism, but on love and beauty. Here a skilled psychologist, artist and Buddhist priest opens us to hopeful, enlightening and heretofore unanticipated possibilities. It is a book for all of us, professional and lay, western and eastern, skeptical and credulous. ~ Nathan Katz, Jewish, Professor of Religious Studies, Florida International University

Wise, insightful, compassionate observations that teach us that we find love not in ourselves but in that which we are devoted to. Brazier has created a thought-provoking paradigm in which love, art, spirituality and psychotherapy attempt to dance together to the symphony of life's meaning, conducted passionately within the corridor of the human heart. ~ Gregg Krech, Buddhist, author of Naikan: Gratitude, Grace and the Japanese Art of Self-reflection; and of other books on Naikan and Constructive Living.