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Book Reviews--Relationships The following books are either directly or indirectly about couple relationships. Passionate Marriage: Keeping Love and Intimacy Alive in Committed Relationships by David Schnarch, Ph.D., 1997. I love this book. The author's premises, conclusions, and methods all make a lot of sense to me. The author is a sex therapist and his sample cases are about sexual issues, but the book is about much more than sex. In fact, his view on sex departs from that of other sex therapists in that he pretty much thinks that if you work on the relationship, the sexual part will follow pretty much naturally. He talks about a process of human development called differentiation, which he describes as "the process by which we become more uniquely ourselves by maintaining ourselves in relationship with those we love." The opposite of differentiation in a relationship is "emotional fusion," in which the partners are "controlled by their connection. They have lost the ability to direct themselves and so get swept up in how people around them are feeling. There's room for only one opinion, one position."
Intimacy, he says, "is the two-prong process of confronting yourself and self-disclosing to your partner." He talks about "other-validated intimacy," which "involves the expectation of acceptance, empathy, validation, or reciprocal disclosure from one's partner" (which is fine if you can get it), and "self-validated intimacy," which "relies on a person's maintaining his or her own sense of identity and self-worth when disclosing, with no expectation of acceptance or reciprocity from the partner. One's capacity for self-validated intimacy is directly related to one's level of differentiation; that is, one's ability to maintain a clear sense of oneself when loved ones are pressuring for conforming and sameness." As the marriage progresses and you become more intimate and closer, you also need to grow to a higher level of differentiation in order to "hold onto yourself."
He says that "marriages go through cycles of growth and disruption mixed with periods of comfort and stability." Too long a period of comfort and stability leads to boredom and stagnation; the growth is necessary to become closer and more intimate. But growth is not comfortable—you have to confront yourself and make changes—and it often takes a crisis to break out of the comfort zone.
The book is long and dense with information. I found revelations on many pages. It is excellently written and fairly easy to read, with examples of couples the author has worked with—and in case you get bored, he always holds out the carrot on the stick that if you read this, your sex life will get better. Recommended. For more information, see http://www.passionatemarriage.com. Reviewed 6/3/01.
Becoming Soulmates: How To Share a Deeply Passionate Journey Where Challenges Strengthen Love by John Grey, Ph.D. and Bonney Grey, R.N., 2000. What can I say? The authors are my marriage counselors and I am very grateful to them. They're good. (He is not the "Men Are from Mars" John Gray.) The book is about developing the skills to deal with the inevitable conflicts in a marriage. It is short and written in clear basic English, with some simple graphics and catchy phrases. The information is solid. They talk about "claiming your own baggage" rather than blaming the other person, developing a shared vision, and how healing can happen. They give specific techniques for things like talking and listening and calling a "stop." The weakness of the book, and counseling in general, is that "healing" can be very elusive. Their "flow through" healing process may well work for some people, but has not been effective in our case (though it helped with a couple of minor breakthroughs).
The authors have also developed a set of 64 "Joy of Relationship Cards," which are beautifully designed and have names like Acceptance, Agreements, Boundaries, Dodging Arrows, Growth, Harmony, Judgments, Listening, Polarities, Projection, and Transformation. The cards come with a book that tells how to use them (you can draw one or two or three, or do a Tarot-card-like spread) and that has two well-written and useful pages on each card. Doing the cards is a fun and productive way to work on your relationship for 15 or 30 minutes in the evening.
The authors' web site is http://www.soulmateoracle.com. Reviewed 6/3/01.
Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood by William Pollack, Ph.D., 1998. This is a wonderful book. The author talks about the Boy Code, "the outdated and constricting assumptions, models, and rules about boys that our society has used since the nineteenth century," which "puts boys and men into a gender straightjacket." From their earliest interactions with parents and other caregivers, boys are socialized to speak up and act, but to cover up their more gentle, caring, vulnerable sides. The culture then dictates that they should "separate" from their mothers at an early age, which leaves them lacking in the loving, nurturing interactions that would shape more healthy growth. They are supposed to be tough and independent. In reality, boys have a full emotional range, with as much potential for empathy and connection as girls, though they have a natural tendency to relate more through action and less through talking.
The author outlines how parents, teachers, and others, with all good intentions, support the Boy Code and cause boys to tough out situations where they feel unpleasant emotions, setting the stage for massive unnecessary unhappiness. He gives in-depth looks at relationships with parents and other children and issues about schools, sports, adolescence and sexuality, depression, violence, and divorce. The book is very well written, drawing on the author's experience and research as well as many references, with a wealth of stories and suggestions on how to make improvements at both family and cultural levels. It is packed with so many revelations that I can't even touch on them all in this review. It would be especially useful to parents, educators, and therapists, but I also think everyone who has any contact with boys or men should read it—in other words, everyone. Very well written. Recommended. For more information, see http://www.williampollack.com/real_boys_book.html. Reviewed 7/7/01.
I Don't Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression by Terrence Real, 1997. Another must-read, for a far wider audience than the title would suggest. This book starts with similar assumptions to those in Real Boys and builds on those ideas for a look at adult problems. The book is not at all limited to depression; the issues it deals with seem so common as to be almost universal in our culture, with diagnosable depression accounting for the more extreme cases. While the book's main subject is depression, the issues it deals with are endemic in our culture, and anyone interested in human development, relationships, and gender differences in socialization would benefit by reading it. As with Real Boys, I would recommend it to men who have any emotional issues and anyone who has contact with such men—in other words, everyone.
The author, a psychotherapist, postulates two kinds of depression: overt (the standard kind, with massive sadness and other symptoms) and covert, which involves just as much pain and sadness but which is "hidden from [others] and largely hidden from [the person's] own conscious awareness." While depression is diagnosed more often in women, the author presents a convincing case that if you account for covert depression, which is far more common in men and which can manifest as anxiety, substance abuse, and personality disorders, the rates of depression are the same for both sexes. (Though the book is about male depression, it undoubtedly applies to some woman as well.) He believes depression is caused by a biological predisposition coupled with childhood experiences of betrayal or abandonment or abuse. Before covert depression can be healed, it has to be brought out into the open; the man needs to go through the overt depression in order to recognize and heal from those childhood injuries.
Men with covert depression employ a number of strategies to ease the problem. The man may use work, romance, alcohol, or even wholesome activities, "just about anything, so long as the substance, person, or activity relieves the threat of overt depression. To accomplish this, the defense must transform one's state from shame to grandiosity; from feelings of worth-less-ness to feelings of extraordinary worth and well-being…In covert depression, the defense or addiction always pulls the man from 'less than' to 'better than'—rather than to a moderate sense of inherent value. [It] can never move one directly from shame to healthy self-esteem, because such a shift requires confrontation with, rather than avoidance of, one's own feelings."
The book focuses on men's problems in relationships, as that is often what brings them to seek therapy. It is dense with information, including many more revelatory ideas than I can cite here, including violence, controlling behavior, narcissism/grandiosity, addictive defenses, cultural issues, and methods for healing. It has numerous examples of men the author has worked with, as well as his own story. As do most therapists these days, the author sometimes uses antidepressants as an adjunct to therapy. Very well written. Recommended. Reviewed 7/7/01.
The Pain Behind the Mask: Overcoming Masculine Depression by John Lynch, Ph.D. and Christopher Kilmartin, Ph.D., 1999. Another look at depression in men. Well researched and thoughtful, this book agrees with much of the outlook of the book in the previous review. Depression in men often involves unawareness of feelings and behavior that is destructive to the man and his relationships with other people. Much of the reason for this is the way men have been socialized since they were young. Men need to get in touch with their feelings before they can work through the depression. The book has two main sections: "Origins and Consequences," which defines male depression and deals with personal and cultural causes for it, and "Remedies," in which the authors outline steps for acquiring skills for successful relationships and recommend directions for social change.
This book differs in how it sees masculinity as distinguished from femininity. The authors accept the idea that, since the mother is usually the primary nurturer, young boys, unlike young girls, have to establish a male identity based on "not being female," and that this leaves them with a basic "fear of engulfment." This doesn't seem quite right to me. The authors consider that this results in the male dilemma of "Not too close, not too far away." I certainly agree that this dilemma exists.
This is for the most part a very good book, intelligently addressing an important issue. However, the understanding seems a bit shallower than the previous book reviewed. The writing style is dry, and the examples don't have a lot of depth. Reviewed 7/14/01.
"Should I Stay or Go? How Controlled Separation (CS) Can Save Your Marriage by Lee Raffel, M.S.W, 1997. The author developed her Controlled Separation as a structured method for people to gain perspective on their troubled marriages. It includes a written agreement that covers 12 guidelines, including time frame, finances, and whether/when to see each other during the separation. The book is easy reading, well-written with quite a few stories of couples she worked with. I was a bit scared seeing how many of her examples ended in divorce, but it is realistic, and apparently the CS guidelines helped these couples to go through that process better. And, she does give some marriage success stories. Her CS method appears to be very sensible, and I would think that it would be useful to any couple undergoing a separation. Reviewed 5/24/01.
Angry Men, Passive Men: Understanding the Roots of Men's Anger and How to Move Beyond It by Marvin Allen, 1993. The author is a therapist and active in the men's movement, and has run "wildman gatherings." Now, I am not necessarily a fan of that kind of thing; the worst sour note I hit in the book was the one reference to Robert Bly, whom he quoted talking about the "soft male, a passive man who is overly influenced by feminine values." But other than that, I was very impressed by the book. The author does not, as Bly and some others do, seem to have anything against women. He delineates "Six Types of Dysfunctional Dads" in the chapter before "Seven Kinds of Dysfunctional Moms," and is not without sympathy for any of them. He includes his own history, from his less-than-happy childhood through becoming a therapist and developing his own methods for working with men. One main thesis is the name of the first chapter, "Why Men Can't Feel." His theories and methods of bringing up and working through men's repressed feelings appear to be sound and effective. Reviewed 5/24/01.
The Verbally Abusive Relationship by Patricia Evans, 1996. I found this book to be potentially very harmful. It polarizes the verbally abuser/abused relationship and portrays the abused woman as a helpless victim. The two people are in two different realities; Reality I, the man's, is in Power Over mode; Reality II, the woman's is in Personal Power mode. (She pays lip service to the fact that some abusers are women and some victims men.) The woman's main problem is in not understanding this; the poor woman simply tries and tries to speak to the man as if he were in her reality. Most likely her only recourse is to leave.
I just don't see it that way for several reasons. One, for a woman to stay with a man very long and put up with this behavior (and she talks about many long marriages), she probably has problems with insecurities and self-respect. Two, it assumes that the abuse generally goes in one direction. That just isn't true for many couples; both can be active at abuse. Three, even if the man "starts" it, there are ways a woman with self-respect can respond so that she can both not take abuse and have the possibility of improving the relationship (see the next review). Four, I don't know how many men or women stay in one of the two realities 100% of the time; my guess is that most people go back and forth between them at times.
All those complaints aired, I did find a lot of valuable material in the book. The descriptions of verbal abuse were good, and could be very helpful to someone in an abusive relationship. The chapters on "The Anger Addict" and "The Underlying Dynamics" have some good information. However, some of the suggestions on how to respond to verbal abuse sounded to me just as likely to aggravate the situation as to defuse it. My main objection is that the book as a whole makes it easy for a woman to place all the blame for her relationship problems on the man, which is not a good place to start making improvements from. Reviewed 5/24/01.
The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense by Suzette Haden Elgin, PhD, 1980.
The author has also written at least 6 other books in the Gentle Art of Self-Defense series. She is a linguist working in "applied psycholinguistics" and has also written science fiction novels that I've enjoyed. She looks at interpersonal problems—and solutions--in terms of linguistics. I find her writing absolutely delightful, and find it endearing that she sees everything in terms of words and their effects, downplaying the actual emotions as original causes. It's kind of a behavioral outlook; work on the words and the emotions will follow—with maybe a little therapy necessary in extreme cases. (Of course, being an expert on words, she knows how to write so I will find it delightful and endearing rather than overly focused on her own discipline as the be-all and end-all of everything.)
I found the earlier of the two books exceedingly helpful, and the newer one, while more sophisticated in some ways, just a little too full of formulas and cute ways to catch the reader's attention. Perhaps if I'd read the earlier one first I would have appreciated the other more; I did find it helpful, and I plan to re-read at least parts of both. Both also had journals or logs and other assignments for the reader to fill in; I did not have interest in working with those, but some people would find them useful.
The Seven Principals for Making Marriage Work by John M. Gottman, Ph.D., 1999. I had read about the author's ideas about emotional intelligence, and was looking forward to reading this book. The first chapters, however, though they had some interesting substance, were downright annoying because of the marketing tone--he goes on and on about how his approach is so great and new and different and it's what everyone needs. But once he gets down to specifics, his ideas and suggestions are sensible and practical. He studied interactions between married couples in a lab where he had them stay overnight and act as naturally as possible while being observed via cameras. He correlated the observations with later information about which of the marriages subsequently continued happily and which ended in divorce. He says he can now tell whether a marriage is going to end in divorce by observing the couple interacting for just five minutes.
The author says that the talking and listening techniques that counselors use ("I hear that you're saying that you feel…") were developed for therapists, not for couples, and that in fact listening to your partner express her/his negative emotions about you, or things you do, is likely to trigger a reaction rather than to be helpful. His approach concentrates on building up positive ways of interacting. The seven principals are: enhance your love maps (your familiarity with each other's worlds), nurture your fondness and admiration, turn toward each other instead of away, let your partner influence you, solve your solvable problems, overcome gridlock (on unsolvable problems), and create shared meaning. The book is full of questionnaires and exercises for assessing the status of your marriage and working towards improvements. I tend to skim those and not work through them, but I can see that if someone wanted to use the book as a workbook, it could be very helpful. Reviewed 8/30/01.
Changing Directions without Losing Your Way: Managing the Six Stages of Change at Work and in Life by Paul and Sarah Edwards, 2001. This book is mostly about changing jobs or careers. But a lot of it is applicable to relationships, or to any life change. First I did a quick scan and thought it was too slick and too conventional (mainstream) for me. But then I looked again, read the whole book, and liked it. Well written, with lots of examples, questions, lists, exercises—even advice (questionable in my opinion) on what kinds of food to eat. The six stages are: facing a new reality, releasing the past, finding your way, embracing the future, developing a strategy, and putting the show on the road. I was able, without too much of a stretch, to see how to use the methods in the book to work through relationship problems, assuming that both partners recognize the need for change. Reviewed 7/4/01.
Making Peace with Your Past: The Six Essential Steps to Enjoying a Great Future by Harold Bloomfield, M.D., 2000. The jacket blurb says the author is "the psychiatrist America trusts," and he's been on Oprah, Good Morning America, etc., etc. Definitely pop psychology. His six steps are: experience the source of deep peace within you, break the shackles of shame, stop the slow acid drip of regret, resolve the grief that will not end, heal the wounds of love and sex, and end the bitterness of blame and move on—and up. I rebelled against the catchy tone for a while, especially the visualization exercises. But by the time I got to the chapter on blame, I was finding a lot of value, and applicable to relationships. And of course, it's very readable, with lots of examples. Reviewed 7/14/01.
Note: I know my taste is quirky, and I have strong opinions that are far from mainstream. I am aware that I am skeptical, cynical, and not always kind. I am not interested in arguing about anything, but if you like and/or dislike the same things as I do, and feel like it, email me.
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