This timeless classic, Born Only Once, describes the emotional turmoil of many persons and offers hope for healing through the author's compassionate understanding of their deepest wounds. Psychiatrist Conrad Baars discusses this inner unrest in terms of the fundamental human need for unconditional love, or affirmation. When children have been denied the gift of themselves through affirmation to a greater or lesser degree, they continue to look for this unconditional love, and later as adults suffer from deep feelings of inferiority, inadequacy, uncertainty, and insecurity, as well as having difficulty relating to others.
Baars describes how authentic affirmation strengthens a person to feel secure and happy in himself, able to confront the world and to relate to others with confidence. Affirmation is what unaffirmed persons and those with Emotional Deprivation Disorder need to feel at peace, strong, and secure in their own identity. Baars lists many things that unaffirmed persons can do to help themselves, but it is hoped that the reader will be moved to lead an authentically affirming life by being open to the goodness of persons, things, nature, ideas, etc. This simple way of being, of openness to being moved, can bring peace and resolve difficulties.
Conrad W. Baars, MD (1919-1981) was a Dutch-born American citizen who practiced psychiatry in the United States from 1946 until his death. Educated at Oxford University and the University of Amsterdam Medical School, Dr. Baars served in the anti-Nazi underground in Belgium, France, and the Netherlands during World War II. Captured by the Nazis, he spent one and a half years in Buchenwald concentration camp. He emigrated to the United States following the war, and discovered Dutch psychiatrist Dr. Anna A. Terruwe's work on energy and frustration neuroses in the mid-1950's. He further developed and promoted this work throughout the rest of his psychiatric career. His books include Born Only Once, Feeling and Healing Your Emotions, and I Will Give Them a New Heart: Reflections on the Priesthood and the Renewal of the Church. Drs. Baars and Terruwe coauthored Psychic Wholeness and Healing, and Healing the Unaffirmed. His autobiography, Doctor of the Heart, details much of his experience in Buchenwald.
