Amazon.com Review
Father-son relationships are complex equations involving comparison, competition, and competency issues, writes father-son team Gerald and Lee Jampolsky in
Listen to Me: A Book for Women and Men About Father-Son Relationships. In this deeply personal book written in the form of letters between the two men, the Jampolskys examine their relationship by sharing feelings, thoughts, and experiences in an effort to strengthen the familial bond.
Gerald (a well-known psychiatrist and author of the bestselling Love Is Letting Go of Fear and founder of the Center for Attitudinal Healing in Tiburon, California) and his son, Lee (a psychologist and author of Healing the Addictive Mind), once had a relationship that was not as healthy and admirable as it appeared from the outside. They struggled with drug, alcohol, and work addiction, rage, and a lack of intimacy. The book's epistolary style, the Jampolskys' commitment to being honest and open, and the end-of-chapter discussions and exercises all help Listen to Me transcend the personal, as together they face the myth of the perfect father, examine the phenomena and importance of father substitutes, and look at the father figure in history. Most importantly, they focus on healing themselves and each other.
As the subtitle promises, this book is not just for men. "Healing my relationship with my father is a central part of being a whole man who is available to have intimacy with a woman," writes Lee. And for any woman who has a father, brother, husband, son, or male friend, this book can provide crucial insights into the vital relationship between father and son. --Ericka Lutz
From Publishers Weekly
This exchange of letters between father Gerald, a psychiatrist and author of Love Is Letting Go of Fear, and son Lee, a psychologist and author of Healing the Addictive Mind, provides insights into obstacles that impede affectionate, accepting father-son relations. The three major topics treated are the search for the real, as opposed to the idealized, father; the wound, inflicted on the fearful child inside all of us and exacerbated by the conventional view that the primary responsibility of men is to do rather than to be; and healing the wound, which is accomplished by ridding the self of anger, fears and shame. This is done, according to the authors, by forgiveness, i.e., reopening the past and finding a new way of looking at it with the unwavering realization that hope for a better past must be abandoned. A decision to keep those hopes alive, they maintain, is a decision to suffer. Their letters, almost painfully candid, have helped them to a better relationship and may help not only other fathers and sons, but also the women they love and who love them to a new understanding.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
