Customer Reviews

Going Sane: Maps of Happiness

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

 

 

While, on the surface, this book is pretty self-evident and an interesting read, I have to admit that I have found myself thinking about the ideas presented here long after putting down the book. This, to me, is the sign of a surpising and really good book with worthwhile ideas.

The ideas in this book provide the antidote to all the naysayers who claim that psychotherapy and the recovery and new-age movements all need to pathologize the human condition. My problem with all the critics is that they often don't offer any real solution. Phillips' book starts this discussion with an eye for the direction that psychotherapy should be heading.

This had to be the most inane book that I have read in years. The whole point of this unfortunate expenditure of money seems to be that sane people can't get any respect. The entire book is a repetitive tirade over the word sanity, and over sanity itself being given short shrift while the word insanity and the insane get all of the glory (attention).

If you seek a book on sanity and its fragility which matters, read anything by Kay Redfield Jamison (starting with An Unquiet Mind).

There is little more to this book than about one "letter to the editor" worth of thesis. All the rest of this airy, repetitive, double spaced clap trap is just filling. I must assume the one good review above as of the time of my writing, was submitted by someone related to the author for there can be little else to speak in favor of it than personal affinity for it's creator.

As my major in college was in fact psychology, I think it fair to say I have read a few books on the subject. This book, far from being scolarly feels like a very long and tiresome homework assignment handed in by someone who had nothing to say but was up against a deadline.

I donate old books to the Salvation Army but I can't give this to them in good conscience knowing someone else might actually read it.

Terrible!