A wise and invigorating series of encouragements for self-doubters.
LaPierre presents a motivational manual to help caregivers cope with stress and doubt.
“Life is messy, and healing doubly so,” writes the author, a clinician, clinical supervisor, and crisis interventionist, in this overview of the doubts and self-criticisms that can arise in the mental health field. These feelings can coalesce into what’s popularly known as Imposter Syndrome, a condition in which a person can feel inadequate despite their qualifications and abilities. LaPierre discusses a wide range of the ways well-meaning helpers can act as their own worst enemies, indulging in corrosive “self-talk” that does the work of their most unfair critics for them. The author urges his readers to recognize this kind of self-talk, and to realize that they don’t talk in such brutal terms to anybody else. Throughout his book, LaPierre warns his readers that grinding away to attain competence in any task is no cure for insecurities. “No amount of mastery of your craft will result in true self-acceptance,” he writes. “Imposter Syndrome weaponizes insecurities, self-doubt, mental illness, and all of the unhealthy coping mechanisms we learned from surviving our families or origin and/or other forms of trauma.” Instead, he suggests a number of strategies, such as conscientious journaling (he provides regular bulleted prompts for journal entries). These practical tips are clearly written, but the book’s main strength lies in its generalities; LaPierre is a very insightful guide to the ways in which people typically undermine themselves (“Expectations are vague ideas,” he writes. “If they were specific, they’d be goals”). And while it might be tempting for self-doubters to simply fake confidence and hope to actually feel it one day, LaPierre compassionately but sternly cautions the reader that this approach will ultimately only make a person feel like “the empty shell of a human being.” The text’s core message—that people are better than they give themselves credit for being—will be much appreciated by LaPierre’s readers.
A wise and invigorating series of encouragements for self-doubters.Pub Date: June 11, 2023
ISBN: 9798397978118
Page Count: 178
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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