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SEXUAL HEALING

USING THE POWER OF AN INTIMATE, LOVING RELATIONSHIP TO HEAL YOUR BODY AND SOUL

Another miraculous prescription for mental and physical health, this time with sex as the cure-all. Clinical psychoneurologist and prolific author Pearsall (Ten Laws of Lasting Love, 1993; Making Miracles, 1991, etc.) has discovered—or perhaps invented would be a more accurate word—a new field of medicine that he dubs psychoneurosexuality, or PNS, which explores the relationship among the brain, the mind, the immune system, and sexuality. He begins by explaining the theory of PNS, arguing that it goes beyond Dr. Bernie Siegel's self- healing approach (Love, Medicine and Miracles, 1986) and Dr. David Spiegel's research on the value of social support for sick people (Living Beyond Limits, 1993) to focus on the healing power of an intimate two-person relationship. Such a relationship, he asserts, can help ameliorate all illnesses, but it is especially useful in dealing with old age, heart disease, and cancer. Next, Pearsall attacks what he calls the domination of the ``sex syndicate,'' self-styled experts in the mechanics of sex who in his view have overlooked the power of intimacy and the meaning of love. He concludes with a how-to section on becoming a sexual healer, which involves identifying one's own sexual style, determining one's sexual fitness, and following a weekly three- part sexual workout that consists of ten minutes of shared laughter (he provides a dozen unfunny sex jokes as ``laughrodisiacs''), ten minutes of weeping, and thirty minutes of ``erotorobics'' with one's partner. Couples are urged to take the Pearsall Psychological Inventory, included in the appendix, to discover their potential capacity for sexual healing. There is a real message here about human relationships, but it's swamped by numerous and repetitious lists, the too-cute made-up expressions, and the pseudoscientific jargon. A clear case of overkill.

Pub Date: April 1, 1994

ISBN: 0-517-59440-4

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1994

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IN MY PLACE

From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-374-17563-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992

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THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...

Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").

Pub Date: May 15, 1972

ISBN: 0205632645

Page Count: 105

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972

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