An intelligently crafted resource for pursuing emotional health.
A comprehensive approach to the treatment of anger.
Traditional anger management strategies are often more theoretical than practical, or they discount the moral and spiritual context of a person’s feelings. In their first collaborative effort, Bruteyn (Prisoner to Profiteer, 2014, etc.) and debut author Noblitt articulate a more holistic approach to anger management that includes an emphasis on a sufferer’s existential life—one’s moral beliefs, religious worldview, fears, and aspirations—as well as fitness and nutrition. They also incorporate principles of positive psychology, which concentrate on virtues that are conducive to personal happiness: “People developing strength related skills are likely to be happier. Happy people are less likely to succumb to anger.” With impressive clarity, the authors describe a 12-week program with each weekly session lasting approximately 90 minutes (not counting assigned “homework”). They provide strategies for addressing short- and long-term anger, including detailed breathing exercises, yoga, and music therapy. Each session also offers “Virtue/Strength/Skill” exercises, which are designed to help one tackle the causes of anger from a moral and spiritual perspective. The book also includes a tool—“Anger Control Today”—to chart one’s progress between sessions. The authors have eclectic backgrounds—Noblitt is a yoga master, and Bruteyn, who’s currently serving a sentence in federal prison for securities fraud, has a doctorate in psychology and Christian counseling—and their broad spectrum of experience surely contributes to this book’s thoughtful thoroughness. They’re also relentlessly practical, eschewing complex academic theories in favor of immediately actionable strategies. Along the way, they astutely distinguish between many different kinds of anger—including passive aggression, shame-based anger, and righteous indignation—as each demands its own treatment methods. The program was initially crafted to help counselors lead anger management groups, but it appears suitable for a self-directed program. It’s a useful combination of rigorous psychology, moral philosophy, and good common sense.
An intelligently crafted resource for pursuing emotional health.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5320-6033-5
Page Count: 248
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A riveting look inside the human brain and its quirks.
Acclaimed British neurologist Sacks (Neurology and Psychiatry/Columbia Univ.; The Mind’s Eye, 2010, etc.) delves into the many different sorts of hallucinations that can be generated by the human mind.
The author assembles a wide range of case studies in hallucinations—seeing, hearing or otherwise perceiving things that aren’t there—and the varying brain quirks and disorders that cause them in patients who are otherwise mentally healthy. In each case, he presents a fascinating condition and then expounds on the neurological causes at work, drawing from his own work as a neurologist, as well as other case studies, letters from patients and even historical records and literature. For example, he tells the story of an elderly blind woman who “saw” strange people and animals in her room, caused by Charles Bonnet Syndrome, a condition in with the parts of the brain responsible for vision draw on memories instead of visual perceptions. In another chapter, Sacks recalls his own experimentation with drugs, describing his auditory hallucinations. He believed he heard his neighbors drop by for breakfast, and he cooked for them, “put their ham and eggs on a tray, walked into the living room—and found it completely empty.” He also tells of hallucinations in people who have undergone prolonged sensory deprivation and in those who suffer from Parkinson’s disease, migraines, epilepsy and narcolepsy, among other conditions. Although this collection of disorders feels somewhat formulaic, it’s a formula that has served Sacks well in several previous books (especially his 1985 bestseller The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat), and it’s still effective—largely because Sacks never turns exploitative, instead sketching out each illness with compassion and thoughtful prose.
A riveting look inside the human brain and its quirks.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-307-95724-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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