A sweeping, compassionate, and thought-provoking look at recovery from loss.
Dunblazier presents a comprehensive, wide-angle view of healing from grief.
Each of us, the author asserts, will have “multiple relationships to the losses we experience,” and those relationships can take a variety of forms, expressed in terms of aggression, displacement, delusional thinking, or even overeating. These responses, she says, are related to three broad “circles” of experience: the traumatic event itself; the beliefs, ideas, or choices that are brought to light by that event; and the consequences of acting upon these notions. Dunblazier draws on her experience as a professional counselor, but she also puts a good deal of emphasis on one’s “spiritual imprint” as the key to the phenomenon of grief: “You may relate to them as past lives or simply the inclination and compulsions you begin with, but no matter how you see them, they are the premising lens through which you view life, as well as the foundation of your grief.” She suggests a variety of compensatory activities, from journaling to singing to sex, advising her readers on how to focus that “premising lens” in order to better view their grief. Dunblazier writes with appealing sensitivity throughout this book. Although her specific spiritual rituals (lighting candles, making use of a “sacred altar area,” and so on) won’t appeal to every reader, her more generalized comments show a deep understanding of the nature of grieving that will be useful to anyone who may be dealing with loss. She reassures them that grief is not a sign of weakness, for example, and that many bereaved people take comfort in dealing with pragmatic details, such as paying bills or cleaning the house. Likewise, the personal anecdotes that dot the book will help many grieving readers to know that they’re not alone.
A sweeping, compassionate, and thought-provoking look at recovery from loss.Pub Date: May 28, 2023
ISBN: 9780764366314
Page Count: 272
Publisher: REDFeather
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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IN THE NEWS
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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