An innovative approach to sound psychoanalytical therapy aimed at men normally averse to self-help guides.
A former mechanical design engineer turned therapist introduces classical Freudian therapies to troubled hardhat and lunch pail guys in need of a psychological lift.
Guided imagery and free association are no longer the exclusive psychoanalytical tools of the sensitive ponytail types of the world. Swaniger has beefed up introspection and the art of self-help with a meat-and-potatoes approach to recovery that turns enlightenment into “On the Job Training.” The premise is simple: the problems screwing up your life and leaving you unfulfilled today are rooted in your past. Your job as someone endeavoring to become a better husband, son, father or friend is to construct a shovel-ready bridge to that past, identify the trouble and return to the present with new knowledge about how to behave in a manner more beneficial to you and everyone else in your life. It’s decisive, proactive and thoroughly masculine. Unresolved pain and angst from the “there and then” arrive almost daily in the “here and now” via “taxi cabs” and “bullet trains.” Swaniger’s approach is shrewd without pandering. It appears to be born out of a simple acknowledgement that a guy who enjoyed bashing Tonka trucks around as a kid is now probably a little squeamish about taking a couch trip as an adult. The core therapy—practiced for many years and widely recognized as effective—remains intact; it’s the presentation and administering that has been given a slightly macho tune up. Readers are encouraged to keep strict progress notes in order to chart their success and to reflect upon what they have learned. The author, who overcame his problems with alcohol, employs a tone that is friendly and supportive throughout, while remaining ever mindful of the resistance inherent in his target audience. Those finding themselves growing frustrated with the work are continually urged to put the book aside and return once their negative feelings have subsided. Some of the exercises—such as one prompting readers to imagine meeting their parents as children—can be quite powerful. Constructing a bridge into the unconscious mind is a tough job, and, in the end, it takes guts.
An innovative approach to sound psychoanalytical therapy aimed at men normally averse to self-help guides.Pub Date: March 10, 2009
ISBN: 978-1439222263
Page Count: 156
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
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