Curajul de a fi tu însuți

This book looks at how we talk with others. It asks us to speak with care and clear intent. Jacques Salomé links being yourself to facing your unknown traits. He looks at hidden traits, pain, and the risks of change. He seeks more ease with yourself and with others.

This book is for readers who seek personal growth. It looks at knowing yourself and your ties with others. Salomé draws on the strains of daily life today. He sees how we talk as both skill and art. He blends ideas about the mind with a poet’s voice.

Salomé was born in 1935. He is a psychosociologist. He also works as a trainer, writer, and poet. He studied social psychiatry in Paris. He studied at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. He founded Le Regard fertile in Roussillon-en-Provence. This centre trains people in human relations. He also taught at Université de Lille III. He taught there for fifteen years.

His work draws on Carl Rogers’s humanistic psychology. Early on, he used psychoanalysis. He also followed Milton Erickson’s approach. This view sees resources in the subconscious, not just dark urges. His early training work used Rebirth, bioenergy, and psychodrama. These methods helped him build his own framework, ESPERE. It offers ideas and tools for ties with others.

Salomé has trained more than 60,000 people. They include social workers, doctors, psychologists, and consultants. His teaching has reached France, Belgium, and Canada. It has reached Switzerland and Réunion too. People there use and teach his method. He has written regular columns for French and Canadian journals. He has also developed theory for an association. Its focus is on ties with others through active listening. He has written 70 books. He has co-written works on how people talk and on couples. His books appear in 27 languages.

A severe stroke in February 2014 harmed his speech. A note on his life tells of his recovery. It describes this time with his wife, Valeria. It links this to his view of illness. He believes illness can express hidden distress. He also sees pain as a path to unused strengths.

This is the fourth edition. It forms part of the Jacques Salome series. Elena Neculcea translated it from Le courage d'etre soi.