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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A warning against the appeal of totalitarianism, October 12, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional: The Recovery Movement and Other Self-Help (Paperback)
One reason why Kaminer's book is so excellent is that she doesn't limit herself to the product of obvious flakes such as Werner Erhard and Shirley MacLaine but also goes after stuff taken seriously by millions of folks who are otherwise intelligent and reasonable -- books such as *The Road Less Traveled* and *People of the Lie*. Kaminer shows how their content, when it's not merely vapid, is wrong or even dangerous. Here's Kaminer on "discipline" and the power of evil, or rather on their description in *Road* and *Lie*: "'With total discipline we can solve all problems,' [Peck] promises in the opening pages ... and discipline itself is only a 'system of techniques.' As for evil, it is 'strangely ineffective as a social force,' which would surprise anyone who has even heard of genocide...." And now more on evil and discipline, from *Lie*. (Yes, evil -- which you'll remember is "strangely ineffective as a social force" and thus perhaps is of less concern to Peck's devotees than to the rest of us.) "Peck defines evil as 'the unsubmitted will ... it's almost tempting to think that the problem of evil lies in the will itself ..." There are only two states of being: submission to God and goodness or the refusal to submit to anything beyond one's own will -- which refusal automatically enslaves one to the forces of evil. Ultimately, the only good thing you can will is willingness. "Liberals, romantics, and any student of totalitarianism may find this chilling. There is surely enough recent historical evidence associating submission, not independence of will, with enslavement to evil. In their eagerness to submit, not everyone can distinguish God from the devil." Bravo Wendy Kaminer! I'm sorry to note that this book is out of print. It should be back in print and continue to be widely available, not merely as a stern corrective to silliness but also as an antidote to the barely hidden danger of much pop psychology and pop religiosity.
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27 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A book for the choir, May 21, 2006
This review is from: I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional: The Recovery Movement and Other Self-Help (Paperback)
There are at least two types of eloquence: one is stating the case in a manner that those already in agreement will applaud, and the other is arguing persuasively. Kaminer's book has been hailed for its exhortations and wit by foes of the "self-help" movement, whatever that is exactly. Fans of the books that she criticizes are undoubtably outraged. The skeptical will be unimpressed.
The irony is, one of Kaminer's chief complaints about the somewhat ill-defined self-help movement is that it blunts our critical thinking: she wants a nation of critical thinkers who won't analyze this book too closely. Kaminer doesn't offer any analytical evidence of how the self-help movement actually affects our society, she merely utters extremely vague warnings" "imagine the effect ... ." Nor does she have much evidence as to how people typically use self-help: a reader might gain useful insights without letting the book rule their life or joining a cult around the author. The "self-help movement" is a phrase that is tossed around a great deal, but what is Kaminer actually referring to? Any book that lumps together Norman Vincent Peale, Wicca, Alcoholics Anonymous and M. Scott Peck is covering a lot of ground. (It has never occurred to me to think of Wicca as a "self-help movement"; I guess Kaminer just doesn't like it and decided to throw it in for good measure.) All of philosophy and theology could be thrown into such a broad categorization. It would have been better if Kaminer had stuck to specific criticisms of specific books instead of trying to generalize about such a variety of works.
Kaminer's main arguments are two - one is that if you agree with her, the two of you will share the pleasure of sneering smugly at others. Secondly, she keeps informing us that whatever it is doesn't appeal to her as if we should be just overwhelmed that ***!!!!Wendy Kaminer!!!!*** doesn't approve.
I actually read this a long time ago. It came back to me when I was reading Paul Collins' fascinating The Trouble with Tom: The Strange Afterlife and Times of Thomas Paine, and read the discussion of phrenology in the early 19th century. Kaminer seems to assume that all this is a recent phenomenon, falling back, I suppose, on the common tendency to think that things are going to pot these days but were much better at some vague time in the past. Actually, books of advice have been extremely popular since the the printing press made reading materials generally available: they were the best sellers of 16th century England. Moreover, most of these books are based, legitimately or otherwise, on psychology and/or religion, both of which predate our time. Kaminer has indicated a respect for psychology in other books, and religion certainly preceded the founding of the Republic that she argues is now endangered by self-help books. So what has happened? She compares, for example, a belief in the 12-step higher power with devotion to a political demagogue. In the first place, a disembodied, individually conceived "higher power" is not capable of running for President-for-Life. In the second place, how does this differ from religion in general (which Kaminer never directly deals with)? Indeed, religious movements seem to me to be far more likely to be used for demagoguery: when was AA a voting bloc?
Some people do get pretty silly over these books, but is that because of the book, or because they're silly? Are their individual lives actually better or worse without the book? I know several people who work professionally with alcoholics who think that AA can be tremendously helpful. Sure, it would be better if no-one was inclined towards alcoholism, but that isn't one of the choices. The members of AA, et al., feel that they are better off with the program than without it. Kaminer gives us no reason to believe that she is a better judge of what is good for them than they are.
Toward the end of her book, she expresses her hope that we will drop all this nonsense and learn to think sharply and insightfully. She doesn't explain how she expects people who are too moronic to read these advice books critically are supposed to effect this transformation.
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17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
the culture of self-pity gets its comeuppance, April 22, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional: The Recovery Movement and Other Self-Help (Paperback)
If, like me, you've been simultaneously fascinated and appalled by the wares of the "self-help" or "psychology" sections of your local bookstore (or ubiquitous cyberbookstore), you'll enjoy seeing it dissected and skewered by Wendy Kaminer, the rare person to have applied her brain to this stuff (and someone who has even attended a variety of [fill in this blank] Anonymous meetings and other non-events). Nowhere does Kaminer deny that actual people get seriously screwed up by abusive parents, booze, dope, etc. What dismays her are the lack of perspective and the rejection of any use of a critical intelligence. What worries her are the tendencies of the therapists, gurus and quacks to reinforce and play on the helplessness of their paying customers. Kaminer is surprisingly generous to people whose activities she finds generally obnoxious, for example conceding that the most moronic TV shows occasionally illuminate real problems. This is an even-handed book from a writer who refreshingly says at the start: "I have only opinions and ideas; so although I imagine myself engaging in a dialogue with my readers, I don't imagine that we constitute a fellowship, based on shared experiences. Nor do I pretend to love my readers, any more than they love me and countless other strangers." It's a sad state of affairs when a writer feels compelled to say something this obvious. Many people will be dismayed by Kaminer's principled refusal to provide platitudinous or trite answers to the problems (real or imagined) of the day. They'll be happier with such opuscules as *Seven Habits of Highly Effective People*. Of this book, Kaminer asks, "what are the seven habits?" and quotes Covey: "In harmony with the natural laws of growth, they provide an incremental, sequential, highly integrated approach to the development of personal and interpersonal effectiveness.... They become the basis of the person's character, creating an empowering center of correct maps from which an individual can effectively solve problems, maximize opportunities, and continually learn and integrate other principles in an upward spiral of growth." -- and Kaminer comments: "I doubt that many readers know what this means (I don't), but they know how it makes them feel. Covey seduces them with all the right buzzwords: harmony, integrate, interpersonal, maximize, effectiveness, empowering (eventually he gets around to synergy). His peroration, the 'upward spiral of growth' (a phrase he repeats often), is uplifting, if you don't mind feeling like a corkscrew. Covey has a useful talent for saying nothing inspiringly; he should write commencement speeches." This wasn't the only point where I laughed out loud. *I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional* is a worthy successor to Mark Twain's *Christian Science*.
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