72 of 74 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
THE only book you need, April 1, 2003
This review is from: I Don't Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression (Paperback)
When I say I suffered in my depression I should say "we" because I dragged a lot of people down with me. I did therapy, read books, took medications. This book helped me, I believe, more than any other single thing that I did.
Mr. Real writes from experience and with knowledge from both sides of the couch. As he composites out and recreates therapy sessions, you, as a depressed man, should see yourself. You can see where you've been and get a preview of where you're going.
Each chapter ends on an upbeat. It does not end on a sappy upbeat. This is no Stuart Smalley book, no pop psychology here. It is a real upbeat, real hope on a deep level. I actually copied paragraphs from this text onto my own paper and carried them along with me.
It takes courage not to be depressed. This book makes this clear. It also makes it abundantly clear that it can be done.
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103 of 114 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Real men., May 3, 2002
This review is from: I Don't Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression (Paperback)
I've struggled with depression since childhood. I've read volume after volume on the subject. Most of it, however earnest, just blows smoke.
This one's different. Real is the only therapist I've read who captures the anger behind depression--dammit, harm has been done to innocent people, and the pain they suffer is unrecognised, devalued or morally stigmatised becuse the sufferers happen to be male.
The rage they feel against the perpetrator(s)never gets a focus. After all, it would be focussed on the people who cared for you as you grew. What does one do if the hand that beats you is the hand that feeds you? You do what you need to survive the moment. You stay fed. Only later do you fail to thrive.
Terrence Real focusses his own rage on this injustice--and rage, indeed, he does. He suffered the abuse that leads to depression, and now helps men face it squarely.
Like an ugly scab, healing ain't always pretty. If you never properly clean and dress a wound, grotesque scars disfigure you. Real tells the stories of men who have put the time, effort and care into healing. It ain't easy. But having done so, their scars heal clean, and a happier life begins.
Other so-called self-help books (the "inner-child" movement springs to mind) seem to argue that learning to love your scars is the road to happiness. Poppycock.
(I might also add that this is less a self-help book than a political and moral treatise. If sufferers find it helpful, that's a by-product.)
Personally, I think Real lets women off the hook too easily in this book. Having endured the female-dominated "caring professions" to effect my own cure, I think Real ought to empahsise the complicity of women in the patriarchy (which he rightly labels as damaging to both sexes).
Even quite enlightened women patronise men who try to be strong and scorn them when they allow themselves to be weak. In their effort to stamp out male aggression, they demean male strength--a strength which women who wish to heal might well wish they had.
Real is the first scholar I've read to point out that the patriarchy actually harms men more than it harms women. It certainly proves fatal more often.
He is the first therapist I know to make a case that men are MORE emotional than women; not the insensitive droogs of feminist caricature.
Against a background of shallow, ineffectual, touchy-feely self-help gurus, Real stands out as a straight talker. To borrow a phrase from the patriarchy, he's results-oriented. And that ain't a bad thing.
Real? An aptly named author.
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34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Every man and woman should read this book., October 10, 1997
By A Customer
"I Just Don't Want to Talk About It" by Terrence
Real may just save my marriage and give me
back the man I married 33 years ago. As I read
this book, I cried. My husband and I were on
every page. Finally, I understand the hell
we've been living in for so long. A psychotherapist for twenty
years, author Terrence Real exposes the pain
the isolation, the workaholism,the disconnection
that signal covert male depression.
He is conservative in his estimates. I would say
most men suffer from depression at some point in their lives.
And they suffer longer because they have been
taught to repress, to deny. Thank you, Terry.
I'm bringing your book to our next counseling session.
We may live happily ever after, after all.
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