title: Healthy Selfishness: Getting the Life You Deserve Without the Guilt
author: Rachael F. Heller
description: Professors, counselors, and authors of the <i>New York Times</i> No. 1 bestseller <i>The Carbohydrate Addicts Diet,</i> doctors Richard and Rachael Heller have devoted their careers to helping people reach personal goals. The Hellers have extensive media experience, including appearances on <i>The Oprah Winfrey Show</i> and NBCs <i>Today</i> show. They have been featured in numerous magazines, including <i>Womans Day, Family Circle, Good Housekeeping, Shape, Self</i>, and <i>People.</i> <b>Dr. Rachael Heller</b> holds three graduate degrees in psychology, including a doctorate with a dual second major in interpersonal communication and motivational psychology. She was twice-named Helena Rubenstein Foundation Scholar and served as senior psychological consultant to NASAs Space Life Sciences Training Program. <b>Dr. Richard Heller</b> is the recipient of two graduate degrees from New York University, including a doctorate in biology with a specialty in the study of the impact of stress on behavior. Both have been awarded professional appointments to The City University of New York and Mt. Sinai School of Medicine.
zlib_text: Iain M. Banks : Inversions
  v1.0 (15-Feb-01) Scanning, layout and quick proof by 4i Pub
  Iain M. Banks : Inversions
   v1.0 (15-Feb-01) Scanning, layout and quick proof by 4i Publications
    
    
   For Michelle
    
    
    
   PROLOGUE
   The only sin is selfishness. So said the good Doctor. When she first expressed this opinion I was young
  enough initially to be puzzled and then to be impressed at what I took to be her profundity.
   It was only later, in my middle-age, when she was long gone from us, that I began to suspect that the
  opposite is just as true. Arguably there is a sense in which selfishness is the only true virtue, and therefore
  that - as opposites are given to cancelling each other out - selfishness is finally neutral, indeed valueless,
  outside a supporting moral context. In later years still - my maturity, if you will, or my old age, if you wish
  - I have with some reluctance again come to respect the Doctor's point of view, and to agree with her,
  tentatively at least, that selfishness