The Self Beyond: Toward Life’s Meaning by Benjamin S. Llamzon (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 791 role in hospital settings. Collins is of the opinion that many forms of therapy ignore the spiritual needs of man. The church counselor should let his values be known, because " the counselor's ethics, values and philosophy influence and even determine the goals of therapy. It follows that counselor values will also influence the methods and techniques which are means toward these goals." (p. 109) He seems to opt for the idea that a client should choose a counselor with the same value system. The rather complex material of abormal behavior is handled with great clarity of language. Its intended audience should be able to grasp the material with relative ease. The present volume makes more generous use of case studies and overcomes one of the criticisms this reviewer made about volumes I and II in the series. Each chapter has a short annotated bibliography, and the general bibliography and index are also most helpful. Fractured Personalities is a good introduction for the seminary student or church leader with little background in abnormal behavior. It can also serve as a refresher or a handy reference book for the busy experience pastor. Cluster of lndepemdent Theological Schools Washington, D. C. WILLIAM J. NESSEL, o. s.F. s. The Self Beyond: Toward Life's Meaning. By BENJAMIN S. LLAMZON. Chicago: Loyola Press, 1973. Pp. 184. $5.95. The meaning of life is correlative to the nature of personhood; the meaning of life is the meaning in terms of the person, and a person, as reflective consciousness, is perforce intimately connected with " meaning. " As the author puts it: " the problems of the self and the meaning-of-life question are merely two different aspects of the very same reality." (p. 37) Granting the correlation, there are many ways the reality may be approached. Dr. Llamzon, whose book is a moderately long philosophical essay on the topic, chooses to strike for the heart of human personhood and, in terms of his solution of this long-debated puzzle, unfold what he conceives to be the essential dynamic in terms of which its meaning-of-life emerges. He selects, for the essence of the person, the free and reflexive will, the juncture in man of being and becoming, the meeting ground of the " is " and the " ought. " He proposes, as the meaning-full process of the self, the growth in love as a wholing process, the impulsion of the fragment towards the whole. BOOK RlllvD!IWS By way of evaluation, we should note what this procedure accomplishes and what it leaves unaccomplished. The first point at issue is, of course, the election of " free and reflexive will " as the essence of human personhood, which invites us to re-introduce the unending debates of the intellectualists vs~ the voluntarists. It is probably wiser, however, to resist the invitation. A review of this caliber is not the forum in which core philosophical controversies are best debated, nor is Dr. Llamzon concerned in his work with the final distinctive nicety which most aptly defines the person. As long as voluntarists admit that the will is the will of a conscious being whose knowing what he is willing is the significance of the willing, and intellectualists allow that a self-consciousness without a self-determinism is an unreal and eviscerated conception, there is enough agreement for progress. In any realistic consideration of human personhood both aspects have to be given full valuation, and if it exercises and intrigues subtle minds to inquire into their relative preeminence, minds with other concerns can validly, without prejudice to the arguments they are further developing, decide the issue by simple election. Dr. Llamzon is, in any event, not presenting a tightly argued position. He proceeds from point to point juxtaposing his progressive steps rather loosely, depending on the appeal of the over-all position more than on the intrinsic necessities of his series of links. Furthermore, he does not aim at presenting a total picture of the dynamics of the human person in relation to the meaning of life. He singles out what he considers the primal and ultimate dynamic-love as a wholing process, and relates this dynamic and its...