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A meeting place for Virtology, human development and the ideas that shape our lives.
Explore Eduardo Casarotto’s framework through its central concepts, its books and essays that bring the questions into everyday experience.
Virtology is Eduardo Casarotto’s theoretical and practical framework for human needs, personality and the development of virtues.
Its starting question is concrete: why can we understand a recurring pattern and still repeat it under pressure? The author’s answer brings together what drives us, how we learned to respond and which capacities we can develop.
The proposal reaches from the individual to the institution, connecting personal development with the environments in which people learn, work and live.
How does Virtology stand in relation to the major theories of personality?
In Foundations of Virtology, Casarotto examines his framework alongside the 18 theories discussed in Theories of Personality by Feist, Roberts and Feist. He brings five traditions into his proposed synthesis: psychodynamics, human needs, dispositional structure, biological foundations and social learning.
Freud · Adler · Jung · Klein
Horney · Erikson · Fromm
Maslow · Rogers · May
Allport · McCrae & Costa
Eysenck · Buss
Skinner · Bandura
Rotter & Mischel · Kelly
This is Casarotto’s comparison of theoretical architectures. It does not establish clinical superiority over the other approaches.
Explore the comparison in English →Casarotto proposes that pride and selfishness are the two roots of all neuroses. His model asks which underlying demand a defensive response is protecting.
Neurofunctional System of Pride
In the author’s account, importance promises acceptance and safety. A threat to recognition or position can organize comparison, control, withdrawal or retaliation.
The proposed shift: humility develops a sense of worth less dependent on position and approval.
Neurofunctional System of Selfishness
In the model, a rigid priority given to personal needs can reduce the weight of others’ needs, sustaining indifference, inflexibility or instrumental relationships.
The proposed shift: selflessness develops a response that includes the other person.
“All neuroses” states the scope of the author’s theory. It is not an established explanation of all mental illness or a judgment of moral worth. The proposed systems and their mechanisms require independent empirical testing.
Read the two-root argument →Development as a changing mode of functioning.
The seven Evolution Bands describe a proposed continuum of reactivity, awareness and consideration for others. In Casarotto’s account, the question is which responses a person can actually sustain when pressure rises.
The bands are continuous and reversible states in the author’s model. They are not fixed identities, measures of intelligence or rankings of human worth.
Explore the Evolution Bands →A need is not the same as the desire we learn to pursue.
Casarotto distinguishes a human need from the cultural form through which we try to satisfy it. A need for connection, for example, can become attached to recognition, consumption or a particular image of success.
His framework organizes 51 needs into five groups. They remain present across life, with changing intensity and expression. Open each group to explore the full map.
The classification and English renderings above follow Foundations of Virtology. This is the author’s conceptual framework, not a diagnostic questionnaire.
The question is what becomes available in a real situation.
Virtology treats a virtue as a learned disposition that can guide a response, including under pressure. In the author’s account, the 33 virtues emerge from a comparative inquiry into religious traditions and become the basis of a structured practice program.
The Manual of Human Development through Virtues brings this into seven steps: read, write by hand, speak aloud, practice in life, reflect, repeat and stay present.
Explore all 33 virtues and the practice →English translation in progress. Materials available on request. The Manual’s educational program complements appropriate professional care.
Founder of Instituto Virtudes and creator of Virtology and Humanization 2.0, Casarotto connects human development with institutional life. The Institute reports more than 25 years of practice, over 20 books authored and more than 2,000 therapists trained. Its work includes prisons and educational settings, alongside dialogue with healthcare institutions.
What happens when one culture becomes the world’s measure of human worth?
Eduardo Casarotto introduces structural Americanism: his framework for examining how cultural power shapes institutions, identities and desire.
English translation available.
Explore the publishing presentation →
Start with a question that stays with you.
Essays on pride, desire, comparison, relationships and the patterns we repeat. Read the illustrated English collection and explore the framework through familiar situations.
Explore the English blog →
PRIDE & RECOGNITIONThe search for importance beneath familiar reactions.
DESIRE & POSSIBILITYHow experience shapes the lives we can imagine.
COMPARISON & HUMAN WORTHWhen someone else’s position becomes a measure of our own.
Twelve short reads, in order, so you meet Virtology the right way — not in scattered pieces. Built from the "Unveiling Neuroplasticity" course.
Why understanding rarely becomes change.
No mysticism — the actual mechanism.
The root that keeps the pattern alive.
Why forcing it fails — what really drives it.
Your honest starting line.
What's built, and what's defense.
Your toolkit — competences, not commandments.
Change comes in cycles — the biology of why.
Same symptom, different roots.
Small, specific, repeated.
The retroactive marker.
Your next doors.
One is personal. One is the Institute. Both are the real thing.
Virtology is the first pillar of my method — the PRM (Personality Reconstruction Matrix). One-to-one work in English or Portuguese, for people who want to apply it to their own life — with someone who lives it.
Book your Discovery → Message me on WhatsApp → See the ways to work with me →Go straight to the origin: the short course that started it all, and the full professional training with Dr. Eduardo Casarotto.
The Institute’s Professional Formation with Dr. Eduardo Casarotto is the complete training — the entire framework, the clinical method, and the certification to practice. The deepest way in, and the real route if you want to do this work with others.
Explore the Professional Formation →
A translator who fell for the science. I'm Isabella Becker — I came to Virtology to translate it, and stayed to practice it. Alchemy of Virtues is where I bring it into English, one reader at a time. Virtology by Dr. Eduardo Casarotto · in partnership with Instituto Virtudes.
Human Development Advisor · Certified Virtologist · International Director of Instituto Virtudes
contato@alquimiadasvirtudes.com