Stanley Siegel (1)

The original edition of this book is listed as having been published in 1982. A lot has happened in the world of published popular psychology since then, so perhaps that's the reason why this volume feels so flat. I found the author's basic principle of therapy interesting: seeming problem behavior is sometimes a reaction to a larger problem, and sometimes that behavior does not need to be "fixed" if it is serving a positive purpose. As a book, however, this would have been better organized not as a series of essays/case studies, but as a continuous narrative into which the stories had been integrated. As individual stories, they are presented too simplistically. There is very little sense of the author's progress toward insight (either he confidently progresses toward a solution, or he has a rapid flash of understanding), and the patients all too readily accept his observations and implement them. As a brief text for students of psychology and therapy, this might help provide some solid case studies, but it did not inspire me to finish the book, despite the fact that it's only about 200 pages long. I'll seek out another book by Irvin Yalom (I really enjoyed Love's Executioner) next time I feel like reading about psychological insights.… (meer)