Table of Contents

Introduction 1. Origins, meanings and nuances of failure 2. Failure across the lifespan 3. Collective human folly, sin and error 4. The tragic arts 5. Being a failure 6. Learning from failure Further reading References

About the Author

Colin Feltham is Emeritus Professor of Critical Counselling Studies at Sheffield Hallam University. He has written over twenty books including, most recently, What's Wrong with Us? (2007) and Critical Thinking in Counselling and Psychotherapy (2010).

Reviews

"His quest to write a book about concepts of failure and where they come from was driven by alternating views of his own interesting life (his pre-academic background includes spells working for the mental health charity MIND and counselling in a bank), and by the urge to provide a 'corrective to the hype about happiness - the many self-help books around which purport to show the "road to happiness".' Prof Feltham's research into what constitutes failure took him from philosophers like Diogenes and Saint Augustine through to Sartre and Camus and other thinkers, artists and poets. Failure is widely present across all these domains, yet we tend to deny our failures, he says." - Yorkshire Post