“I hated myself, I adored myself, and then we grew old together,” wrote the French writer Paul Valéry.

Self-esteem plays a major role in attaining a sense of personal equilibrium and a good quality of life. This intimate relationship with the self influences our feelings about ourselves and the world, as well as our behaviour and emotions.

In 1999, L’Estime de soi was among the first books to make these ideas known to a wide readership. Since its publication, Christophe André has continued working with his patients on self-esteem.

This new book is the result. It radically embraces the daily practice of self-esteem and of how to live in friendship and harmony with yourself. It also reveals new ways (self-acceptance, forgetting the self) to lead a better life.

Relating to the self, to action, to others: all the dimensions of daily existence are examined here from the angle of self-esteem.

This book shows how not to drown in your own issues and how to rediscover a harmonious relationship with yourself and with the world, so as to achieve the goal of true fulfilment.

Christophe André is a psychiatrist and psychotherapist working at Hôpital Sainte-Anne, in Paris. He is the co-author, with François Lelord, of the best-selling L’Estime de soi (1999; Odile Jacob paperback, 2002), which sold more than 200,000 copies. With François Lelord, he also co-authored Comment gérer les personnalités difficiles (1996; Odile Jacob paperback, 2000) and La Force des émotions (2001; Odile Jacob paperback, 2003). He is the author of Vivre heureux (2003; Odile Jacob paperback, 2004) and Psychologie de la peur (2004; Odile Jacob paperback, 2005), and the co-author, with Patrick Légeron, of La Peur des autres (2000; Odile Jacob paperback, 2003).