A provocative reevaluation of addictive behavior that considers it not within the prevalent ``disease model,'' as California-based therapist Grof puts it, but within the context of a universal need for spiritual satisfaction. Grof's understanding of addiction is firsthand and hard-won: She's a recovering alcoholic and draws on her experience (``The day I hit bottom with my alcoholism, I was brought to my knees'') to ground what's sometimes an otherwise heady, theory-laden argument. The heart of the argument is that society's growing tendency to consider all addiction—as well as the ``attachments'' (to money, prestige, other people, etc.) that characterize much human behavior—as disease ``paints a picture of humanity as being universally sick.'' Instead, Grof proposes ``a wellness model for the understanding and treatment of addictions.'' That model—worked out with reference to spiritual teachings from Hinduism to Jung- -posits that we each consist of two ``selves'': a ``deeper,'' perhaps divine, self that's our original nature, and a grafted-on ``small self,'' equivalent to the ego. From prenatal days onward, Grof says, we're pushed by outside, often abusive, forces away from the greater self and into the smaller self. Yet we retain a ``craving'' for the deeper self, which most of us try to slake through inappropriate means—through the pursuit of wealth, for example, or, in the case of addicts, through drug highs. Addictive behavior thus springs from a healthy impulse to return to the deeper self—which, in fact, can be recovered only through spiritual practices (including, apparently, Grof's own ``Holotropic Breathwork,'' which she touts here). Addicts probably should work with the Twelve Steps, which the author reads as a spiritual blueprint, though one rife with pitfalls. Grof's two-selves model of human nature is as old as the myth of the Fall; but her application of it to addiction is inspired, well argued (though more case histories would have enlivened the text), and alight with hope and promise.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250314-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1993
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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