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A SHINING AFFLICTION

A STORY OF HARM AND HEALING IN PSYCHOTHERAPY

A beautifully written first-person account of a novice therapist's trial by fire. Rogers (Human Development and Psychology/Harvard Univ.) was just starting the clinical internship for her Ph.D. at a center for emotionally disturbed children when she met Ben, a neglected and abandoned five-year-old. The play therapy she conducted with him to explore his fears had an unintended and powerful impact on Rogers, who, unknown to her supervisors, had herself been in therapy for years. She began to hear voices directing her to kill her therapist, who became frightened and dropped her. Following this ``abandonment,'' her disintegration accelerated, and hospitalization followed. With the eye of an artist and the voice of a poet, Rogers creates vivid images of madness: ``The top of my head lifts off and with it my answers to his questions lift and float out of me into the street where they mingle with the smoky breaths of passersby.'' Once released from the hospital, she sought a new analyst, identified here as Blumenthal (all the major characters have pseudonyms). With him, she began to piece together fractured memories of childhood abuse. Under Blumenthal's care and through her resumed play therapy with Ben, she came to see how her story and the child's overlapped. Rogers learned, she says, that there is ``no place I can stand as a therapist outside and apart from my shadow and understand Ben's and my play: I have no transcendent or omniscient view, no expert or foolproof understanding.'' In an afterword directed at her colleagues, she criticizes therapists who remain aloof in the therapeutic relationship, speaking with authority about what they cannot know and blaming their failures on their patients. Rogers's vague descriptions of recovering memories in therapy sheds no light on that controversial issue, but she humanizes therapists and provides an illuminating inside view of their training and the two-sided nature of their work.

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1995

ISBN: 0-670-85727-0

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1995

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THE 48 LAWS OF POWER

If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.

The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.

Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.

If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998

ISBN: 0-670-88146-5

Page Count: 430

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998

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PERMISSION TO FEEL

UNLOCKING THE POWER OF EMOTIONS TO HELP OUR KIDS, OURSELVES, AND OUR SOCIETY THRIVE

An intriguing approach to identifying and relating to one’s emotions.

An analysis of our emotions and the skills required to understand them.

We all have emotions, but how many of us have the vocabulary to accurately describe our experiences or to understand how our emotions affect the way we act? In this guide to help readers with their emotions, Brackett, the founding director of Yale University’s Center for Emotional Intelligence, presents a five-step method he calls R.U.L.E.R.: We need to recognize our emotions, understand what has caused them, be able to label them with precise terms and descriptions, know how to safely and effectively express them, and be able to regulate them in productive ways. The author walks readers through each step and provides an intriguing tool to use to help identify a specific emotion. Brackett introduces a four-square grid called a Mood Meter, which allows one to define where an emotion falls based on pleasantness and energy. He also uses four colors for each quadrant: yellow for high pleasantness and high energy, red for low pleasantness and high energy, green for high pleasantness and low energy, and blue for low pleasantness and low energy. The idea is to identify where an emotion lies in this grid in order to put the R.U.L.E.R. method to good use. The author’s research is wide-ranging, and his interweaving of his personal story with the data helps make the book less academic and more accessible to general readers. It’s particularly useful for parents and teachers who want to help children learn to handle difficult emotions so that they can thrive rather than be overwhelmed by them. The author’s system will also find use in the workplace. “Emotions are the most powerful force inside the workplace—as they are in every human endeavor,” writes Brackett. “They influence everything from leadership effectiveness to building and maintaining complex relationships, from innovation to customer relations.”

An intriguing approach to identifying and relating to one’s emotions.

Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-250-21284-9

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Celadon Books

Review Posted Online: June 22, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019

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