With a mix of brilliant insight, deep sincerity and knowledge of psychoanalytic theory, the country's most famous child psychiatrist interviews children about their lives in a continually conflicted society. Children from inner cities, poor rural areas and well-to-do families serve as subjects as they discuss issues of race, social class, and other cultural conflicts in their own lives. How these children interpret parental and societal inhibitions, how they use religious lessons and how they interpret life as they experience it to draw from their experiences certain moral energy is the heart of this book. The various chapters focus on moral energy, moral purpose and vulnerability, what is character, idealism, and social class.