FINALLY GETTING IT RIGHT

Practical advice by psychotherapist Halpern (How to Break Your Addition to a Person, 1982) on how to end a bad relationship and expand your capacity to have a good one. Halpern's thesis is a simple one: If you are in a good relationship, you will feel better about yourself and your life. To achieve this ``you must give up your lifelong task of trying to make someone unavailable available, someone ungiving giving and someone unloving loving.'' Halpern's common-sense, pop-psych approach is readable and candid. He encourages his readers to analyze just what it is about themselves that causes them to be attracted to people they should be avoiding. There are plenty of clichÇs, but for the most part Halpern eschews pat, one-size-fits- all formulas, and he doesn't talk down to his readers or get self- promoting like so many of his colleagues in this genre. He offers valuable insights into what kinds of romantic expectations are realistic. In a chapter on ``Navigating Love's Paradoxes'' he shows how the road to a love relationship is ``replete with contradictions'' — such as the desire to be independent and the need to be ``dependably connected.'' Using the how-to format to best advantage, Halpern offers many checklists (including those that test one's capacity to receive love and those that evaluate one's relationship), realistic case histories, and a bibliography that ranges from Sigmund Freud to Judith Kuriansky. Readers with the guts to pick up this book might well be able to break out of their unhealthy relationships and ``finally get it right.''