Some of the advice may sound glib or repetitive, but Little gives readers a sense of how they can make significant changes...
A chatty book based on scientific research shows how personal choice can inform as much of our personality—and destiny—as genetics and environment.
A scholar of personality and motivational psychology, Little (Me, Myself, and Us: The Science of Personality and the Art of Well-Being, 2014, etc.) argues that we have a choice in who we are and what we do and that our personalities reflect the choices we make and the values we hold. These “defining activities” or “personal projects” allow us to transcend “the old nature-nurture debate.” For if who we are is nothing more than the genetic hand we have been dealt and the circumstances of the environments that have profoundly influenced us, there is nothing we can do about either of those. However, our personal projects represent our own choices, based on who we are or perhaps who we perceive ourselves to be. We all have professional aspirations, interpersonal engagements, familial obligations, and secret dreams and ambitions. The author provides a way of articulating the variety of projects through which we determine the courses of our lives—from emptying the dishwasher to exercising regularly to asserting a leadership role at work to having a baby—but he also shows how these are likely to bring us satisfaction, or frustration, based on personality traits we have already identified in ourselves. Do we prefer to work alone or with others? Do we live in an area that accommodates this type of project? Do we depend so much on another person that divorce or death would shatter our dreams? Are we willing to step beyond our comfort zones to achieve a goal? Multiple projects might well require multiple personalities or a “ ‘fake it till you make it’ strategy.”
Some of the advice may sound glib or repetitive, but Little gives readers a sense of how they can make significant changes in their lives.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1996-5
Page Count: 120
Publisher: TED/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
So good, so vitally important, but so . . . depressing.
A reader’s guide to depression, hopelessly bleak yet heartbreakingly real.
In this massive tome, Solomon (A Stone Boat, 1994, etc.) confronts the terrors of depression with a breadth both panoramic and precise. The 12 tersely titled chapters (“Depression,” “Breakdowns,” “Treatments,” “Alternatives,” “Populations,” “Addiction,” “Suicide,” “History,” “Poverty,” “Politics,” “Evolution,” and “Hope”) address with spectacular clarity the ways in which depression steals lives away, leaving its prey bereft of their very selves. Despite the occasional cliché (“Life is fraught with sorrows”) and heavy metaphor (“Grief is a humble angel”), Solomon’s prose illuminates a dark topic through the unfolding tales of his sources and his own life story; by allowing the voices of those who battle depression to speak, rich and varied pictures of daily struggle, defeat, and triumph ultimately emerge. The author deserves kudos as well both for the geographical span of his account (which ranges from Senegal to Greenland) and for its historical sweep (which begins with Hippocrates and continues to the present). Paradoxically, the completeness of Solomon’s vision undermines his readability: so much suffering fills these pages that, at times, it’s all a bit too much darkness. (The gruesome litany of suicide techniques, for example, seems gratuitous.) Nevertheless, the importance of the work becomes virtually self-evident when Solomon addresses such topics as the cultural denial of depression, masculine fears of seeking treatment, strengths and weaknesses of various treatments, the salutary effect of diet and exercise on depression, the high cost of treatment, and chronic depression among the elderly. Fortunately the final chapter is “Hope”—for the reader will certainly be in need of some after the marathon of gloom.
So good, so vitally important, but so . . . depressing.Pub Date: June 12, 2001
ISBN: 0-684-85466-X
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2001
A scholarly, demanding work—aptly described by its author as a ``strange, unorthodox book''—that examines the complex interaction between psychotherapy and culture by placing American psychotherapy within the context of the nation's larger history. Cushman (History/California School of Professional Psychology), a psychotherapist in private practice in northern California, sees American psychotherapy as a cultural artifact rather than a universal truth. To understand it, he looks closely at its historical antecedents, economic components, and political consequences, examining the 19th-century world into which psychotherapy was born and then showing how it has developed since 1900. The asylum movement, Freud's theories of the unconscious, mesmerism, and the interpersonal psychiatry of Harry Stack Sullivan are all covered. However, Cushman pays closest attention to the theories of Melanie Klein, asserting that her ideas about the inborn psychic structure of the self paved the way for new psychoanalytic theories emphasizing self-development and freedom that conformed to the social trends of the second half of the 20th century. The author argues that the post-World War II era has been marked by a pervasive sense of personal emptiness and a commitment to self-liberation through consumerism. While psychotherapy's role is to treat the unhappy effects of this emptiness, Cushman believes that its philosophy of individualism and emphasis on the self have in fact reinforced consumerism. The task now, he says, is to replace this solipsistic configuration with a new, socially cooperative and morally superior one, and he urges psychotherapists to become actively involved in this process. To promote the necessary dialogue, Cushman includes an appendix describing some of the many alternative configurations of the self that have existed during the past 2,500 years of Western civilization. A deeply moral work that engages, informs, and persuades- -recommended to anyone concerned about the evolving American psyche.
Pub Date: March 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-201-62643-8
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Addison-Wesley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995
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