Calling such strategies “logical” may be overstating his case, but Bader's treatise does cast light on the murky and largely...
An insider's look at what goes on behind the scenes of our desires.
Drawing on more than 20 years' experience as a psychoanalyst and therapist, Bader attempts to provide a useful guide for both the layperson and clinician regarding the meaning and purpose of our erotic daydreams and sexual fantasies, the “theatrical” setting for arousal. Noting the high number of Americans who purport to be dissatisfied in the bedroom and citing his patients' case histories, he contends that despite the relative permissiveness and hedonism of our culture, guilt and worry still hold sway. The cornerstone of Bader's theory is his contention that the primary concern of our unconscious minds is our physical and psychological safety. In this context, one's fantasy life becomes a sort of “canary in the mine” indicating either a healthy or oppressive atmosphere. Sexual fantasies, which he equates with sexual preferences, set and maintain these safe conditions, thereby permitting arousal. The real source of problems both in and out of the bedroom, as Bader sees it, are the pathogenic beliefs we hold and act upon. (“Sex begins in the mind and then travels downward,” he declares.) These beliefs comprise our views of reality as seen through the distorting lens of childhood shame, rejection, and helplessness, which lead to sexual inhibitions and a whole array of self-defeating behavior. Approached in this manner, bondage, group sex, voyeurism, fetishism, gang rape, asphyxiation, and the many other consensual “roles” Bader touches on, become the imaginary means to a pleasurable end. Sexual fantasy becomes “a sign of health, a way to solve problems,” so-called “kinky” scenarios simply implying a more convoluted route to safety.
Calling such strategies “logical” may be overstating his case, but Bader's treatise does cast light on the murky and largely unexamined question of why sexual fantasies turn us on.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-26933-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2001
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
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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