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KNOW YOUR FEELINGS by Margaret & Elizabeth Forsyth Hyde

KNOW YOUR FEELINGS

By

Pub Date: March 1st, 1975
Publisher: Franklin Watts

This is less the advice book that the second person title would indicate than a slack sort of introduction to the psychology of emotions -- namely anger, aggression, love, fear, happiness and depression. In a typical objective YA overview, the chapter on different types and definitions of aggression says an inconsequential little about the work of a lot of people -- Robert Jay Lifton, Erich Fromm, Louis Leakey, Freud, Adler, Dr. Harlow of the Madison monkeys, Lorenz, Jane Goodall and Jose Delgado -- leading nowhere except to some lame and impractical concluding suggestions for reducing violence. (""Instead of living in large, impersonal cities, it might help if people could live in smaller communities."") The chapter on love (surely not a basic reaction like anger or fear) is even flabbier, full of non-sequiturs and generalizations on the order of ""Some describe sex as a raw quantity of energy, while love accepts the faults of the loved one without being blind to them."" Elsewhere we're informed that happiness comes from within, not from amusement or material goods, and when advice is offered it's not much help. (Though phobias are described as irrational and beyond the control of reason even when recognized, a person with a mother-conditioned fear of thunder is told to ""consult your local weatherman or your librarian about the small percentage of people who are killed by lightning."") Ending up with a catalog of methods for ""changing awareness"" -- concentrate on deep breathing or on a mantra such as Om; look into biofeedback -- this may impress some for its coverage, but surely the days when a mushy rehash is considered good enough for YA's are over.