Book · 1,069 pages · for therapists

A Treatise on the
51 Human Needs

What moves human beings, and how one need affects another.

A patient who does not sleep, does not eat properly, is touched by no one, or lives with the alarm switched on has no fuel to learn, to work through, or to change, whatever the technique. This book shows how to read these needs, in what order to care for them, and what to do with each answer.

AVAILABLE ONLY IN PORTUGUESE

English translation coming soon.

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PDF book in Portuguese · 1,069 pages · 51 profiles · 130 figures · 430 tables · instant delivery

What happens in the therapy room

The complaint almost never carries
the name of the need.

Alba arrives asking for a study technique. She reads the same page three times and retains nothing. Her map shows something else: a bedroom with no door, five hours of broken sleep, no corner of her own, and no conversation in which she can say what she feels. The lack of focus is the last step of a staircase that begins much earlier.

The patient improves in one area and gets worse in another, and you do not know what connected one to the other.

You treat the excess, the compulsive work, the shopping, the screen, and it moves to a new address.

Interpretation sessions that go nowhere, with a body that does not sleep and does not rest.

You know the need is out of place, but you do not know which one to start with.

Every decompensated need decompensates another. This book shows the path the lack travels.

Why the needs

Managing needs
is part of the treatment

In the Fundamentos da Virtologia, caring for needs is one of the most important aspects of treatment. It is not preparation for the real work. It is the ground on which everything else rests.

“An individual who has no bond, no affection, no space of their own, no minimal control over their routine, no rest, no fun, has groups 1 and 2 completely wrecked. If I sit with this person and, for ten years, only interpret dreams and associations, without touching the management of these needs, I force this brain to try to evolve without fuel.”Dr. Eduardo Casarotto, Fundamentos da Virtologia

The rule fits in one sentence: a lack of a basic need is not interpreted, it is regulated. Each need that is met fills the tank a little. Each unmet need drains it. With a low tank, a person reads the world worse, reacts more, and learns less.

That is why the book opens with a thesis that holds for any line of work. CBT, psychoanalysis, systemic therapy, humanistic therapy, and analytical psychology work better when the needs are in balance. The therapist does not need to change approaches. They need to know how to look at the foundation before going deeper.

And the needs do not stand alone. Each virtue treats a need in excess and frees the ones that the vice kept in deficiency. It is through the needs that Virtology reaches the virtues.

The body of the book

Four parts, one path

From what a need is to Monday's session.

Part I

What a need is

Virtology in a few pages, for those who come from another training. What a need is and what is only desire. The 0-to-10 scale. Needs and glia.

Part II

The 51 needs

A complete profile for each, across the five groups: Primitive, Sensation and Connection, Development, Reconnection, and Transcendence.

Part III

One need affects another

Nine chapters on the network of the 51: where the lack flows, the excess that blocks, the mask, the nodes of the network, what addictions inflate, and the constellations.

Part IV

Needs in clinical practice

The first conversation, regulating before interpreting, from needs to virtues, clinical conditions, the stages of life, any approach, record keeping, and follow-up.

The profile of each need

All 51 with the same design

You learn to read one profile and consult the other fifty the same way. Each need has, on average, almost six thousand words.

What it isand what it is not, to set it apart from its neighbors

Where it lives in the bodywhat the body does when it is missing

How to read it in sessionthe questions and the signs

How long it can hold outthe clock for scheduling the reassessment

When it is lackinghow the deficiency shows up

When it is in excessthe excess and what it usually covers

Which needs it talks toits links to the other 50

To practiceexercises from authors who studied behavior change

The virtues that regulate italways with what comes before and the combination

Across the Developmental Bandshow the need changes from Band to Band

In sessiona case to illustrate and the therapist's reading

Sourceswhere each statement comes from, so you can check

Part III

No need lives alone

This is the part that changes how you read the case. It looks at all 51 at once and asks what happens to the others when one moves out of place.

Cascade

One lack knocks down the next.

Compensation

One need covers the lack of another, and the lack shows up there as excess.

Blocking

The excess of one keeps the other from happening.

Mask

What is visible hides what is missing, and fools its own owner.

Rising together

Two rise at the same time, pulled by the same alarm.

Each movement comes with “how it shows up in session” and “the misreading.” Then come the nodes of the network, the needs that trigger the most and the ones that receive the most, and nine constellations ready to recognize in the therapy room:

anxietyprideburnoutloneliness in companythe body without touchthe void of meaninglife on pausegrief left unlivedpurchased worth

The Part closes with an eight-step guide to reading the whole map, with one case from beginning to end.

Part IV

From the map to the session

Seven chapters of clinical practice, with cases and with the most common mistakes.

The first conversation

Asking without turning it into a questionnaire

Opening questions for each group, scoring through conversation, and what the person tells without noticing.

Regulate before interpreting

The foundation first

How to build a small, concrete regulation plan, and use each need's clock to schedule the reassessment.

From needs to virtues

The right virtue, in the right order

The Pyramid, what comes before, the combination, and the leading virtue. Three common mistakes: virtue before the foundation, virtue alone, choosing by the complaint instead of by the map.

In clinical conditions

The map picks up the scent, it does not give the name

Anxiety, OCD, panic, depression, personality disorders, compulsions, and work-related syndrome. And the boundaries: the body, risk, what is cured and what is contained.

At each stage of life

From childhood to old age

The group that pulls hardest at each age, the demand of the stage that is not a symptom, and the family, where needs are regulated or dysregulated.

With any approach

Without changing your line of work

Where the 51 help in CBT, psychoanalysis, systemic therapy, humanistic therapy, and analytical psychology. Each section states that the approach is not Virtology and respects both sides.

Record keeping and follow-up

A need is not solved, it is maintained

A record template, when to space out sessions and when to discharge, referral, and the ethics of the instrument.

At the end

The Map of the 51

The appendix with the whole map and the reference tables, to keep at hand during sessions.

Who the book converses with

Virtology and more than forty outside authors

Each chapter ends with its sources. Virtology comes with credit to Dr. Eduardo Casarotto. Outside authors are cited by name, with the work, and the book always says when a passage is not Virtology.

Anna Lembke · Dopamine Nation Robert Sapolsky · Behave and Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers António Damásio · Descartes' Error Marsha Linehan · DBT Deb Dana · polyvagal theory in therapy Bessel van der Kolk John Bowlby · Sue Johnson · attachment Donald Winnicott · Playing and Reality Viktor Frankl Abraham Maslow Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi · Flow Kristin Neff · Self-Compassion John Gottman Aaron Beck · Judith Beck · Robert Leahy · CBT Aristides Cordioli · OCD Edward Deci and Richard Ryan Lisa Feldman Barrett James Clear · Atomic Habits Robert Kegan · Erik Erikson George Bonanno · Ana Claudia Quintana Arantes Michael Gershon · The Second Brain and the studies on glia and sleep

The Treatise and the Fundamentos

The 51 with a place of their own

The Fundamentos da Virtologia are the source of everything here. They bring together all of Virtology. This book takes the fifty-one needs out of the whole and gives each one a place of its own.

What the Treatise offers

Language that a therapist from any training can read without needing a glossary.
The 51 profiles in the same order, with what is lacking, what is in excess, the time frame of each, and which needs it talks to.
All of Part III on the network: compensations, blockings, masks, nodes, and constellations.
Part IV on clinical practice, including work with five other approaches.
Illustrative cases in almost every chapter, with the therapist's reading.
The “To practice” section, with exercises from other authors, always credited.
130 figures and 430 tables.

What it is not

It does not replace the Fundamentos da Virtologia, where you find the complete theory of personality, the virtues, the Laws of Life, and clinical management.
It is not a test or a diagnosis. The map is an instrument for conversation in session, not a source of truth about the patient.
It is not a book for the patient to read alone. It was written for the therapist.
It does not ask you to change your approach.

Straight from the book

Excerpts

What arrives in the therapy room as “lack of focus” is the last step of a staircase that begins in a bedroom with no door.

Compensation is not a character flaw. It is the same mechanism that keeps temperature and hunger under control, working with what it has at hand.

Excess points to a lack. When a need shows up above 7, the useful question is not only how to lower it. It is what it is covering.

Understanding does not change the brain. Repetition does. That is why Virtology treats the virtues as training, not as advice.

Who it is for

Who reads this book

It is for you if

You are a Virtologist and want the 51 gathered for reference, with the session questions, the signs of lack and of excess, and the virtues that regulate each one.
You are a therapist from another training and want to start with the need that tomorrow's patient brings, without learning the whole method first.
You see cases that improve in one area and get worse in another, and you want to see the connection.
You want to know where to start when everything seems out of place.

It may not be if

You are looking for a book to read about yourself, without seeing clients. For that there is The Guide to the 51 Human Needs.
You want a portrait of your own case. That is the work of The Soul Map.
You want a quick read. The book was made for reference, one profile at a time.

Who wrote it

Isabella Becker

Human Development Advisor, with certified training in Virtology, and founder of the PRM, the Personality Reconstruction Matrix. Creator of Alchemy of Virtues and author of A Treatise on the 22 Laws of Life, Stories That Shape the Soul, and They Love Us Unmasked.

For more than twenty-five years, her craft was translation: making a text say in another language exactly what it said in the first. In this book she did the same with human needs. Virtology belongs to Dr. Eduardo Casarotto. The arrangement, the language, the figures, and the cases are hers. She lives in Grainau, Bavaria, at the foot of the Alps.

with love, Isa 💛

The book

One thousand and sixty-nine pages

The 51 profiles, the network of needs, the clinical part, the Map of the 51, and the reference tables. Yours forever, to open at whichever need the patient brings.

Launch

R$ 97

≈ €16 · US$ 19

paid in full or in card installments
PDF book in Portuguese · 1,069 pages · instant delivery

AVAILABLE ONLY IN PORTUGUESE

English translation coming soon.

Buy the Portuguese edition →

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Frequently asked questions

Before you begin

Is the book in English?

Not yet. The book is currently available only in Portuguese. An English translation is coming soon. The purchase on this page is for the Portuguese edition.

How do I receive the book?

It is a PDF book with instant delivery. As soon as the purchase is confirmed by Hotmart, you receive access and can read it on your phone, tablet, or computer, and print it if you like. The table of contents is clickable, so you can go straight to the need you are looking for.

I am not a Virtologist. Is the book for me?

Yes. The book was written for therapists from any training. It opens by explaining Virtology in a few pages, and Part IV has an entire chapter on how to use the needs in CBT, psychoanalysis, systemic therapy, humanistic therapy, and analytical psychology, without changing your line of work.

Do I need to read it in order?

Part I is worth reading first, because it gives the scale and the vocabulary. After that, the profiles can be opened at whichever need the patient brings. Part III, on the network, yields more after you have read a few profiles.

Does it replace the Fundamentos da Virtologia?

No. The Fundamentos, by Dr. Eduardo Casarotto, bring all of Virtology: the theory of personality, the virtues, the Laws of Life, the psychic apparatus, and clinical management. The 51 needs, the five groups, the 0-to-10 scale, the time frame of each need, the Developmental Bands, the virtues, the Pyramid, and the combinations are his. The Treatise gives the needs a place of their own and a language for reference.

Does the book include the maps to use with patients?

The book includes the Map of the 51 as an appendix, the reference tables, and a record template. The map is an instrument for conversation in session, not a source of truth about the patient, and the book explains how to use it that way.

A Treatise on the51 Human Needs

The complaint almost never carriesthe name of the need.

Managing needsis part of the treatment