Genius Born of Anguish: The Life and Legacy of Henri Nouwen

"The greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection," said Henri Nouwen, Catholic priest, teacher and gay celibate. He has been called a psychologist of the soul. Born in Holland in 1932, Nouwen wrote thirty-nine books about spirituality. He was interested in the relationship between religion and psychology and studied at the Menninger Clinic, one of the world's leading psychiatric hospitals. He taught at Notre Dame, Yale and Harvard. Concerned about people whom society had rejected, Nouwen spent the last ten years of his life working with people with intellectual disabilities at the Daybreak L'Arche community north of Toronto. A profile by Michael Higgins based on Nouwen's writings, interviews with those who knew him, and archival recordings of Nouwen himself.