A sex therapist invites readers to improve their own sex lives by learning from the turn-ons of others. San Francisco therapist Morin developed his Sexual Excitement Survey in the mid-1980s and since then has obtained from some 351 anonymous men and women, both straight and gay, descriptions of their peak erotic encounters and fantasies. Through analysis of their accounts and through his work as a therapist, Morin has come to some conclusions about eroticism, the most important being that it is paradoxical in nature: both joyful and dangerous, life-giving and troublesome. One day while contemplating the elegance of the equation Attraction + Obstacles = Excitement, he had a sudden insight: that eroticism has four cornerstoneslonging and anticipation, violating prohibitions, searching for power, and overcoming ambivalence. Morin also finds that six emotionsexuberance, satisfaction, closeness, anxiety, guilt, and angerare associated with peak erotic experiences and that a unifying scenario, or core erotic theme, shapes each individual's turn-ons. These ideas are explored and illustrated at some length with excerpts from survey responses, passages that some readers may find more of a turn-off than a turn-on, for their language is often crude, colorful, and explicit. Readers are urged to keep private sex journals and to explore their own core erotic themes. For those with what Morin terms ``troublesome turn-ons,'' he proposes a 7- step program for positive erotic change, which he takes care to distinguish from any existing 12-step self-help programs. For those who wish to participate in Morin's ongoing study of eroticism, a copy of his Sex Excitement Survey is provided in an appendix. Interesting for its paradoxical perspective on eroticism, but too abstract to be a truly effective self-help program. ($35,000 ad/promo; author tour)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-06-016975-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1995
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
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
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