An inspiring account of healing and helping.
The psychologist who developed dialectical behavior therapy to treat suicidal individuals reflects on her own life in this gripping memoir.
Linehan (DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets, 2014, etc.) grew up in a “reasonably well-off” family in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the 1940s and ’50s. A “happy-go-lucky, confident high school girl,” though not a good fit for her more sedate family, she experienced a breakdown during her senior year of high school and was institutionalized for more than two years at the Institute for Living in Hartford, Connecticut. The psychoactive drugs and electroconvulsive therapy she was given, in addition to long periods of solitary confinement, left her with few memories of her childhood and adolescence, which she reconstructs here with the help of others. Linehan went on to study psychology and, later, train as a Zen master and work as a research scientist at the University of Washington. These Western and Eastern strands combined to influence the therapeutic protocol she developed, which has been clinically proven to benefit those affected by borderline personality disorder and suicidal tendencies. DBT, one of the first psychological treatment plans to incorporate the teaching of mindfulness, combines a recognition and deep acceptance of what the patient is feeling with the implementation of a behavioral plan for change. While the technique may not strike readers as revolutionary as Linehan contends it is, the author obviously has deep empathy for those she treats and a willingness to try a range of techniques to help them. Although she has chosen not to write about any of her clients, for the sake of their privacy, her description of her own slow, uneven recovery from what she calls a version of hell is compelling, and it's easy to see how it would translate to other individuals. While she doesn't stress the point, it's also clear that both the spiritual and practical approaches she takes would also benefit those with less extreme psychological challenges.
An inspiring account of healing and helping.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9461-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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