CUTTING LOOSE: A Guide to Adult Relationships With Your Parents

The tyrannical father, the silent martyr-mother, the weak father, the not-so-silent martyr-mother. Parents come in various shapes and sizes--most of them aggravating--and none of their tricks have escaped Halpern, who has neatly parsed every one of them in his growing-up guide. The answer, he says, is to climb out from under the ""don't grow"" messages they send, and weed the guilt from your life. Halpern is quite amusing. Most of what he says sounds pretty good. And if this were the first book to have been written on the subject--especially the first written from the transactional analysand's point of view--then one might conceivably fall for his act. But this is roughly the ninety-third such book in less than three months, Enough, already. We've all been sufficiently transacted.