Customer Reviews

Boundary Issues: Using Boundary Intelligence to Get the Intimacy You Want and the Independence You Need in Life, Love, and Work

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I LOVED this book because it told me how to get my mother to stop telling me what to do, wear and eat, my in-laws to stop telling me how to raise my kids, my friends to stop dumping their bad moods on me, and my husband to start sharing his feelings with me! Jane Adams is the most self-helpful writer I've ever read...I wish she were my shrink - or, better yet, my friend!

A Reader in New York

I always thought boundaries were a way of keeping others at a safe distance and out of my personal business. Instead, after reading this book, I learned that boundaries can also be a way to connect with others, and allow greater closeness and intimacy with the people in our lives. In order to do this, we need to cultivate something the author calls "boundary intelligence," which is an intentional management of three aspects of boundaries: their permeability, flexibility, and complexity.

The four elements of Boundary Intelligence are: awareness, insight, intention and action. It makes sense--if someone is stepping all over us, or if we are trespassing on their boundaries, we need first of all to be aware of the transgression, and then have the insight to realize that we need to adjust our boundary's permeability. Then we can form the intention to change and formulate a plan of action to address the boundary transgression.

All of us have different boundary styles, and an interesting quiz in Chapter 3 helps us understand our inner boundaries; those we have with others in our lives; and how their complexity, flexibility, and permeability all impact our dealings with others. I found this very interesting and helpful.

The book had several other quizzes, but they lacked enough explanation for me to make real sense of them. Throughout the book, numerous anecdotes and examples tell of boundaries being trampled on and ignored, all of which further illustrated the necessity of understanding and learning how to successfully negotiate boundaries with the people in our lives.

One area dealt with something the author termed "emotional trespass." This is when "we may not know exactly where our boundaries are, but we know when they've been violated." I can think of innumerable examples of this in my own life, but I never had a way to describe it before.

Armchair Interviews says: Boundary Intelligence will help you navigate your way through all the relationships in your life.

This is one of those subjects I've churned over in my mind countless times in my life and career without knowing exactly what to call it. This concise book gave me a handle. I've never read as clear, smart and lucid description of how important boundaries are in relationships - this is a wonderful book that everyone who's ever dealt with boundary issues should read...five stars!"

Finally someone explains "boundaries" - a lot better than most shrinks do (including Dr. Phil!) This may be the best self-help book I've ever read - I'm buying it for my mother, my best girlfriends, and my 24 year old daughter

This book made me realize how "boundary issues" screwed up so many of my relationships. I wish I'd read it years ago; I would have saved thousands of dollars and hours on therapy. Jane Adams is one smart woman.

This really useful book offers tons of good advice for those of us who find it almost impossible to say no! I learned a lot from the author's suggestions about where to draw the line in the sand. This is one of those self-help books that actually offers help!!

I bought this based on reviews here and at another bookstore. The author uses Kegan's constructive-developmental model as a framework, which is fairly difficult to understand; it also suffers from being based on Piaget's work, which has been shown to be misleading at best. She has merged it with Gardner's multiple intelligences theory (modulo Goleman's Emotional Intelligence) on a very superficial level. She incorporates numerous quizzes, which give the whole book a sort of women's-magazines feel. While there are notes, her sources are out of date, often of questionable merit (Mahler's work has been discredited and Winnicott's work has been shown to be very limited in utility).

So much for theoretical underpinnings and the structure of the work. She includes many interesting stories and anecdotes. These stories show clearly that the audience for the book is assumed to be women. Her commentary is extremely heteronormative, even though she includes anecdotes involving lesbians and gay men. Her treatment of relationships between women and gay men is particularly appalling. She assumes that family life is disrespectful and challenges the reader who does not believe that to try to not engage in emotional trespass for 24 hours, as if that is some impossibility.

All these things I might be able to forgive. But the book doesn't even make much sense. I liked her three parts to boundaries (flexibility, permeability and complexity -- although she occasionally uses variability, which is confusing), but she desploys this analysis in a very rough-and-ready fashion that does not bear close analysis. Even this I could forgive. But her advice in many of the anecdotes is really pretty bad.

Finally, it's a book about boundaries aimed at heterosexual women. Yet at no point does she deal with the topic of sexual advances, by women, towards women, wanted or otherwise. Kind of a big hole, isn't it?

In her first book, Jane Adams successfully addressed a specific challenge: grown children who disappoint their parents. This time she chooses a topic that's hard to pin down. Ironically, she needs to draw boundaries around this topic. By generalizing to a wide range of situations, the topic becomes almost too broad to be useful.

The topic has a great deal of relevance. As a career consultant, I find over half my clients have trouble dealing with boundaries. So I was looking forward to the book. I found some new insights but I would have liked to see the author go deeper rather than broader.
In her first book, Jane Adams successfully addressed a specific challenge: grown children who disappoint their parents. This time she chooses a topic that's hard to pin down. Ironically, she needs to draw boundaries around this topic. By generalizing to a wide range of situations, the topic becomes almost too broad to be useful.

On page 35, Adams introduces elements of boundary intelligence. Although BI appears in the book's title, the concept disappears almost immediately. Instead, Adams describes types of boundaries and boundary violations through the use of anecdotes.

The topic has a great deal of relevance. As a career consultant, I find over half my clients have trouble dealing with boundaries. So I was looking forward to the book. I found some new insights but I would have liked to see the author go deeper rather than broader.

On page 35, Adams introduces elements of boundary intelligence. Although BI appears in the book's title, the concept disappears almost immediately. Instead, Adams describes types of boundaries and boundary violations through the use of anecdotes.

The self-help portion of the book comes from the many exercises and assessment tools -- very shaky since they're ad hoc and conversational rather than scientific. Adams offers limited advice. She brings up the old chestnut: "When you do X, I feel..." Contemporary counselors recognize this language will not defuse a confrontation: in fact, so many people have ridiculed this formula it's likely to backfire.

Adams introduces the concept of "boundary personalities," i.e., we differ in boundary permeability and flexibility. But I suspect these personalities can be influenced by situation. Someone may have highly permeable boundaries at home but not at work (or, alas, vice versa).

Adams identifies inner, family and work boundaries. Inner boundaries refer to our abilities to separate rational thinking from emotions. This topic has been researched extensively. Adams refers to the self-regulation literature but I would like to see a much more extensive discussion with reference to scholarly articles.

More important, it's hard to see similarities among inner, work and family boundaries. Each calls for unique strategies so setting boundaries in one arena may not be relevant to another.

Adams seems most at home with family boundaries, where we have the most control. We can set limits. We can say, "Respect my boundaries or leave." We can talk about feelings. These strategies won't work in the workplace.

As a career consultant, I naturally wanted to learn more about workplace boundaries. Instead, Adams offers examples of employees whose boundaries are violated. I've found that people in transition are most subject to boundary violations: they often feel lonely and seek help or companionship inappropriately. The key is to realize when your defenses are down and act accordingly.

Adams rightly notes that we risk a loss of privacy when we file a health insurance claim with an employer. But I believe we should focus on legal and ethical elements of privacy -- I don't see these concerns as boundary issues.

Most important, rather than focusing on our boundary styles, we need to come up with strategies to protect and defend our boundaries at work. The relevant question isn't, "Are my boundaries permeable?" but rather, "How can I maintain a professional relationship with colleagues and customers?"

Bottom line: I enjoyed the book but felt it was trying to be too much and too little: The concept of "boundaries" was stretched to explain situations and challenges beyond what was realistic or helpful. And given the authors PhD credentials we would anticipate more reference to social science research.

The self-help portion of the book comes from the many exercises and assessment tools -- very shaky since they're ad hoc and conversational rather than scientific. Adams offers limited advice. She brings up the old chestnut: "When you do X, I feel..." Contemporary counselors recognize this language will noto defuse a confrontation: in fact, so many people have ridiculed this formula it's likely to backfire.

Adams introduces the concept of "boundary personalities," i.e., we differ in boundary permeability and flexibiity. But I suspect these personalities can be influenced by situation. Someone may have highly permeable boundaries at home but not at work (or, alas, vice versa).

Adams identifies inner, family and work boundaries. Inner boundaries refer to our abilities to separate rational thinking from emotions. This topic has been researched extensively. Adams refers to the self-regulation literature but I would like to see a much more extensive discussion with reference to scholarly articles.

More important, it's hard to see similarities among inner, work and family boundaries. Each calls for unique strategies so setting boundaries in one arena may not be relevant to another.

Adams seems most at home with family boundaries, where we have the most control. We can set limits. We can say, "Respect my boundaries or leave." We can talk about feelings. These strategies won't work in the workplace.

As a career consultant, I naturally wanted to learn more about workplace boundaries. Instead, Adams offes examples of employees whose boundaries are violated. I've found that people in transition are most subject to boundary violations: they often feel lonely and seek help or companionship inappropriately. The key is to realize when your defenses are down and act accordingly.

Adams rightly notes that we risk a loss of privacy when we file a health insurance claim with an employer. But I believe we should focus on legal and ethical elements of privacy -- I don't see these concerns as boundary issues.

Most important, rather than focusing on our boundary styles, we need to come up with strategies to protect and defend our boundaries at work. The relevant question isn't, "Are my boundaries permeable?" but rather, "How can I maintain a professional relationship with colleagues and customers?"

Bottom line: I enjoyed the book but felt it was trying to be too much and too little: The concept of "boundaries" was stretched to explain situations and challenges beyond what was realistic or helpful. And given the author's PhD credentials we would anticipate more reference to social science research, rather than anecdote or speculation.