Love and Addiction [Paperback]

Stanton Peele (Author), Archie Brodsky (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Signet (May 1, 1976)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451127455
• ISBN-13: 978-0451127457
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,904,781 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A disturbing, provocative, and archtypal self help book, May 16, 2000

By 

Earl Hazell (New York) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Love and Addiction (Signet) (Paperback)

I had the luck of finding this presently out of print book in a used book and clothing store in the mid-West. Peele's LOVE AND ADDICTION is about the most concise, eye-opening and, in light of how the problems he documents in American society have only been geometrically exacerbated in the twenty-five years since it was published (now inlcuding an addiction to guns), the most disturbing of the self-help books I have ever read. With the exception of Nancy Friday's JEALOUSY, not since Bradshaw's HOMECOMING, published in 1991, has a book with a psychological theme sent such powerful vibrations through me, forcing me to look again at my life. It effectively removes the veil covering the sad connection between diametrically opposed (and mutually ineffective) views on politics, religion, sex and sexual freedoms, romance, family, marriage, relationships, crimes of all kinds and the spectre/epidemic of drug addiction in the U.S.- as well as the international history of it all.

Many have said with wisdom- often quoting Martin Luther King or a Buddhist philosopher- that we are all joined together in one unified life, like threads in the fabric of society, and until we are all free, no one or group of us truly are. LOVE AND ADDICTION proves such poetic wisdom scientifically for the western mind, and its increasingly growing more fragile soul. Dr. Peele begins to show us the paradox of American society that is crippling us: how we are being psychologically crushed under the weight of our own technological innovations and tremendous freedoms, and how that affects ever single one of us, in all of our relationships, with everyone and everything.

You will learn more about your world- including that of present day self-help book writers with the same problems he delineates- than you may ever have wanted to know. Because he says what you think you already know in a way that makes it all but impossible to ignore.

This book needs to be reprinted, and made available to the general public, now. Twenty-five years later, its prophetic visions and common sense approach have yet to be surpassed.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best book of its kind - and i've read them all., March 9, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Love and Addiction (Hardcover)

This book goes against the grain on much of what we have learned about addiction (whatever your poison may be). You will soon see why. It offers many real-life case samples, offers insight and solutions. It is written with fierce intelligence. This is not "bathroom reading", like i consider so many self-help books to me. This is a "thinking persons" book, utterly haunting, yet equally helpful. If you have unhealthy, addictive relationships, you MUST read this book.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very interesting, February 15, 2007

By 

E. Novo "Elizabeth Novo" (Taos New Mexico) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Love and Addiction (Signet) (Paperback)

Once I realised my problem was relationship addiction, I read everything i could get my hands on about this phenomenon. His treatise on the entire nature of addiction was very interesting but it wasn't an easy read - I had to be quite determined to finish the book. The prose is pretty dense and he takes you through the whole nature of alcoholism to create the model for addiction that he then compares to relationship addiction.

The information is great, just not very easy to access.