Books by Paul Tournier

Paul Tournier offers a variety of suggestions to help make growing old not an end but a new beginning, filled with purpose and hope. He suggests ways to remain active, using leisure to our best advantage and not letting it become a tyrant. He also provides insights on taking up new interests; becoming involved with young people and new ideas...

Paul Tournier argues that women have for a century struggled to take their places in civilization. In order to do so however, they have had to adapt to fit a masculine society. They have proved capable of that, but could they not go on from there to cure our civilization of its malaise and introduce what is missing, a sense of the person?

In this warm, sensitive, fact-filled book, Paul Tournier deals specifically with many aspects of aging: society's attitude towards the elderly; second careers; the quality of life; financial difficulties; boredom; health; loneliness; and facing death. He believes we must all learn to grow old, and that the process is most successfully accomplished when we prepare and plan for it throughout life.Tournier offers a variety of suggestions to help make growing old not an end but a new beginning, filled with purpose and hope. He suggests ways to remain active and to use leisure to its best advantage without letting it become a tyrant. He also provides insights on taking up new interests, such as becoming involved with young people and new ideas, and learning to pray, to meditate, to acquire wisdom, and to draw increasing strength and inspiration from the reality of divine presence and power.

No one has the right to equate Christianity with weakness or to imagine that the Bible teaches us always to surrender. The biblical message proclaims the sovereign greatness of God which transcends all lesser principles or standards which we might wish to draw from it. Man's great temptation is to want to know by himself what is good and what is evil. He wants to know whether he should withstand or not, but without needing any counsel from God. What is good in the Bible is not this thing or that. It is not a matter of resisting or giving in. It is doing what God wants and when he wants it: it is total dependence upon his person, not upon a moral code.

In the light both of the Bible and of modern science we are confronted not with an abstract and generalized man, but with men who are concrete and personal. They are always in their context, in a certain relationship to the world, to others, and to God. They are always changing. This changing is made up of seasons, stages in their lives, each of which has its own characteristics and peculiar laws. It is in this life story that God's plan may be accomplished. This is what is intimated by the title The Seasons of Life: a man in movement, continually undergoing change, a man living in history, unfolding from his birth until his death. The very movement implies meaning in life.

When we give something to someone we enter into a many-sided relationship, for in return we hope for the gift of love.

The notion that there are two kinds of human beings, the strong and the weak, is dispelled in this helpful and balanced study of psychic strength and spiritual strength. We are much more alike than we may think, says Paul Tournier, the renowned Swiss psychotherapist and student of the Bible. What is different is the external mask that hides identical inner weaknesses and fears. All of us are afraid of others, of God, of ourselves, of life, and of death. What distinguishes us from one another is the way we react to our common distress.In vivid case histories from his notebook, Dr. Tournier illustrates the importance of self understanding in the advancement of healing in Christian freedom. He turns to the Bible to show that the Christian message of sin and grace helps us to accept ourselves realistically in the confidence that God has already accepted us in Jesus Christ. It is through the power derived from Him that we are enabled to find hope and freedom from fear.This book, with its refreshing insights into the parts played by psychology and religion in human problems, opens up new perspectives for people seeking self knowledge and provides an invaluable resource for pastoral and other counselors.

"When we talk of marriage counseling we think immediately of the extreme cases, of threats to seek divorce, of couples in violent disputes who frequently come to blows," Paul Tournier states. But there are many other couples whose marriages are no less a failure. "They live side by side, without hurting one another, but poles apart, because of...