Customer Reviews

Cherishment: A Psychology of the Heart

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
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As one who considers myself part of the prevailing cultural criticism of Freud I did not expect a pleasant read from a book in which his speculations play such a large role. But Young-Bruehl and Bethelard use Freud's solid ground of insights into the human mind to set sail on a voyage both east and west, ancient and modern. They generously take the reader along on their journey, gratuities included in the ticket price. Cherishment is more than a pleasant read. The book is an adventure for the reader/explorer interested in the ways in which we think about love, intimacy, dependency and primary needs. Voyagers meet an assortment of other pilgrims like Michael Balint, Akhilleus and a little known Japanese psychoanalyst named Takeo Doi. We learn to consider language and the ways its usage forms our understanding of our world. We eavesdrop on some patient sessions and are allowed in to some of the authors very personal dreams. Most interesting is the dialogue between the authors who challenge and compliment each other to advance an idea about our primary need to cherish and be cherished.

I was disappointed in this one...I found Cherishment to be a disconcerting and frustrating mix of technical jargon and rambling stream of consciousness. I'm big into self-discovery and learning about how psychothereapy works these days, and certainly understanding the role that cherishment (or lack thereof) plays in the individual and in society at large sounds valuable and interesting, but the authors make you work too hard for too little. The only interesting parts were the segments on the author's patients where they got into some real concrete discussions and examples about the effect of lack of cherishment on these individuals.

This is one of the most elegant explorations of psychology, philosophy, classics, literature, and more that I've read in a long time. This is a beautiful contribution to scholarship, though it fits less into scholarship per se. Its argument--that "cherishment" is a fundamental need for humans--meanders through history, literature, philosophy, psychology without relying excessively on any one field's theories or frameworks. It is part self-reflection between two colleagues/friends and part academic study. The authors do not get hung up on "arguing" their point as much as offering their ideas and intellectual and spiritual journey to the reader to contemplate. Reading this volume was a refreshing and inspiring.