Daniel Smith is a psychotherapist and the author of Muses, Madmen, and Prophets and Monkey Mind. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, and The New Yorker, among other publications. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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"A beautiful and funny meditation on self-awareness and self-acceptance. Smith’s precise, elegant writing gives hope that seeing oneself clearly is an attainable goal."—Rachel Aviv, New York Times bestselling author of Strangers to Ourselves
"The permission slip you didn't know you needed. Smith explores annoyance, shame, envy, and despair with such honesty and insight that you'll stop fighting your difficult emotions and start listening to them. A book that transforms self-judgment into self-knowledge."—Robert J. Waldinger, MD, Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and New York Times bestselling author of The Good Life
"Even though I've been a Daniel Smith fan since Monkey Mind, I didn't expect to fly through this insightful and compact treatise in one exhilarating evening. As a fellow member of the 'club of the overwrought,' I learned so much about the cultural history of feelings—and the danger of moralizing our so-called 'bad' emotions. It's time to drop the hand-wringing about our mistempers—and let in some shadow with the light."—Susannah Cahalan, New York Times bestselling author of Brain on Fire
“A marvelous book about unpleasant emotions that leaves you full of awe and compassion. Smith masterfully weaves moments of shame, envy, and other unpleasant feelings into the texture of a meaningful life.”—Lisa Feldman Barrett, PhD, author of How Emotions Are Made
"Daniel Smith is a bundle of negative emotions after my own heart: bored, annoyed, envious, ashamed, regretful, and sometimes despairing. He is also, in the tradition of Adam Phillips, a connoisseur of the emotions, and a deep excavator of their scientific roots and their spiritual and cultural meanings. With humanity, humor, and sometimes self-flaying honesty, Smith yokes together his wide-ranging research, his expertise as a psychotherapist, and his life as a human to produce a fascinating, humane, wise book about the useful, even redemptive qualities to be found in the bleakest corners of our minds."—Scott Stossel, bestselling author of My Age of Anxiety
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