An impressive account of how ``dialogue therapy''—a technique developed by Young-Eisendrath and her husband and described in detail in the author's Hags and Heroes (1984)—helps couples to achieve a new intimacy. Young-Eisendrath, a Jungian psychoanalyst and feminist, believes that intimacy depends on equality and that equality between the sexes is only now becoming possible in our culture. She uses the term ``gender'' to refer to the role assigned to each sex by society, and she sees the rise of feminism as increasing our awareness of gender stereotypes. To show how the gender split can be healed, Young-Eisendrath follows four representative couples in dialogue therapy: Patty and Joe, a working-class pair in their 20s; Karen and Jonathon, feminist yuppies in their 30s; Larry and Louise, a twosome in their 40s struggling with social change; and Charles and Pamela, a traditional, patriarchal couple in their 60s. Each pair meets for two hours a month for six months with Young-Eisendrath and her husband, and are directed in conversation—with the therapists acting as alter egos—that expresses the feelings that each couple implies but has been unable to put into direct words. Excerpts from these sessions demonstrate just how the couples gradually learn to conduct their own dialogues as they work through their differences, conflicts, and sexual stereotypes concerning issues such as money, leisure, parenting, envy, power, fighting, etc. Young-Eisendrath sees the process as a transformation from disillusionment into trust, one in which individuals achieve mature dependence, learning to maintain their own viewpoints while understanding those of the other gender. Scholarly and thoughtful yet totally accessible and quite practical.
Pub Date: May 20, 1993
ISBN: 0-688-11434-4
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1993
Categories: PSYCHOLOGY
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The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION | PSYCHOLOGY | HISTORICAL & MILITARY
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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
Categories: PSYCHOLOGY | SELF-HELP
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