My American Life: From Rage to Entitlement [Hardcover]

Price Cobbs (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 20, 2005

Price M. Cobbs, M.D., coauthor, with William H. Grier, of Black Rage -- one of the twentieth century's most profound examinations of black life in America -- has been a witness to some of the most important events in American history.

Now, thirty years later, for the first time he reconsiders his extraordinary life and career, offering a moving account of his journey -- as one of the nation's foremost authorities in the field of psychiatry -- from rage to entitlement.

An African American pioneer in the field of psychiatry, Dr. Cobbs in his lifetime has grown up during the Great Depression, felt the dramatic effects of World War II, and witnessed the dismantling of Jim Crow laws and the impact of Brown vs. Board of Education. He watched the rise of Martin Luther King Jr. and the heroism of Rosa Parks in the civil rights movement. He followed the life of Malcolm X and "searched avidly for what animated the ideas beneath his fiery rhetoric." Every experience of his early life and education led to an auspicious partnership with a colleague, William H. Grier, who shared his convictions and the work involved in producing what the New York Times would call "one of the most important books on [blacks]."

Written at the height of the black power movement, Black Rage has sold over one million copies and remains a relevant study of race relations. Dr. Cobbs has lived through decades of profound social, political, and cultural transformation in America. A second-generation doctor, Cobbs has at once written a classic portrait of an amazing family and the making of a healer and community and business leader. As a psychiatrist, he has pioneered methods for studying the psychology of race and gender. So, while My American Life is a heartfelt memoir of a loving father and husband, it is also a chronicle of the black experience in America.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Coauthor of Black Rage, the seminal 1968 work that identified the syndrome and coined the phrase, psychiatrist Cobbs here sketches the influences and experiences that shaped him and his work. The result is a nuanced portrait of mid–20th-century racial consciousness, one that insists on claiming "entitlement" (a sense of belonging and of worth) as proper rechanneling of rage. Born in Los Angeles in 1928, Cobbs grew up in an upper-middle-class family that faced regular discrimination, behavior that caused his father's "subtle undercurrent of anger." Service in a segregated army unit reinforced Cobbs's recognition of American ideals unmet. Moving to the South to enter medical school in Nashville in 1954 added further to his store of experiences—and his own responses to them. Studying psychiatry, Cobbs vowed to understand people's feelings and behavior in the broadest context, including feelings about race, a factor previously underacknowledged; this approach was the precursor to what he calls Ethnotherapy. An instance of race-based vandalism led Cobbs to George Leonard of the Esalen Institute; together they developed an innovative cross-racial confrontation group, in which, yes, black rage surfaced from even the better-off. Rage, co-written with William Grier, appeared after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in a country searching for answers. The rest of this book is brief; the bilddung sections, its bulk, illuminate a personal and generational odyssey.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

In the mid-1960s, Cobbs, along with a fellow black psychiatrist, wrote Black Rage, a seminal book on race relations as America was in the midst of racial transformation. In this memoir, Cobbs reflects on his life and his own personal rage. Cobbs' father was a black physician who moved his practice from the South to Los Angeles. Cobbs and his sister grew up in the relative security of middle-class life. While his father had left-leaning political sensibilities, his mother was grounded in religion-centered black society. After medical school, Cobbs began his residency and internship, an experience that formed the basis of much of his theory of black rage, the medical impact of anger resulting from racism and the recognition that cultural background is important to medical treatment. Applying his theory to himself, Cobbs recognizes the need to accept the rage but to channel it to secure rightful entitlement rooted in self-worth. He sees this as the challenge for black Americans today, to turn rage into positive action that better addresses historic and continuing obstacles rather than toward self-destructive behavior. Vernon Ford
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Atria Books (September 20, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743496191
• ISBN-13: 978-0743496193
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,054,961 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Parallel Lives, March 29, 2006

By 

Opera Lover in The Desert (Southwest) - See all my reviews

This review is from: My American Life: From Rage to Entitlement (Hardcover)

For those of us who know and are friends/colleagues of Price Cobbs, and speaking for myself as a writer, being objective will not be easy...like Mom saying how terrific her son is. But I'll try objectivity.

This book really ought to be entitled, "READ THIS BOOK !!" - bold, underscored and 2 exclamation points. As a long-time friend of Price and his family, there were no differences - well, perhaps a few, but to the point that differences are and should be treasured. So here I am in 2006 discovering a whole other Price Cobbs I thought I knew. And for the reader who has no personal knowledge of the author, it will be an adventure, an eye opener. In a word - riveting. His writing has evolved from the "Black Rage" days - it's crystal clear, concise and slam dunk. He writes eloquently yet simply and straight forward. His life is our lives if you think about it.

So. READ THIS BOOK. Whether you are a young white liberal or old white ultra-conservative, an upwardly mobile black, Hispanic, Asian or whomever, or a stay-at-home parent - you will relate - and most likely be deeply touched by passages that ring true, that perhaps are on a par with your own experiences in this life.
There is, or should be, great kinship in the human experience, and if more of us would adopt that mantra, the world as it is today would turn into a more peaceful place.

Once, back in the 1960s when I headed public relations and media for Esalen Institute, Price asked me how I had managed to be this open, tolerant, understanding and relatively non-prejudiced person. I answered, "well, number one, I've always admired and been fascinated by other cultures since at least first grade; but number two, I do have prejudices. I hate cauliflower and bigots."

But even coming out of the civil rights years, the Esalen racial confrontation experiences, this new book brings a whole new perspective about others'(and Price's in particular) pain and rage in dealing with the hurtful actions of others toward their fellow man. Like many readers, I would think, I get tired of all the "me me me" books out there today - growth, get rich, and other do-it books, and so I tend to read less and less. However, "My American Life" was one I could not put down. It has all the makings of a literary prize winner, and many of my friends and I feel strongly that it has the makings of a darned good feature length movie.
So, strongly recommended; great reading.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars THEY WERE "REFUGEES" IMMEDIATELY, September 19, 2005

By 

Margaret Opine "Margaret Opine" - See all my reviews

This review is from: My American Life: From Rage to Entitlement (Hardcover)

Dr. Cobbs, you know America thanks you for this expose on the feelings of people who have been raging quietly for centuries. Sir, "entitlement" for them would mean "humanity" for us. Katrina may have been that wake-up call telling us that the rage is going to still be going on in the hearts of some Americans because their entitlement is still far and shortcoming.

This is a close and intimate read about a subject that should shame America but it doesn't. Cobbs hand is trying to strike a balance between the way it is and the way it ought to be. Very encouraging.
--Margaret Opine

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb book by a great man, September 30, 2008

By 

Seeker of Handy Tools (Harvard, MA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: My American Life: From Rage to Entitlement (Paperback)

Dr. Price Cobbs has made important contributions to American society in a number of ways: as a physician to his patients, as the articulator of major sociological insights in Black Rage, Cracking the Corporate Code: The Revealing Success Stories of 32 African-American Executives, as consultant / teacher / coach for leaders and managers in major corporate organizations, and as a model of integrity, achievement, energy and fun for family and friends fortunate enough to know him.

In this book he shares his personal journey in an engaging and readable fashion, chronicling his life and the forces that helped shape him over the last 80 years in America. Readers of all races can find this to be a book of great interest, and perhaps they will go on to discover further Dr. Cobbs' insights into how we grew up, how that affected our self image and our views of others, and how we can move beyond our individual and societal programming to become healthier, better, more effective human beings.