From Publishers Weekly
After briefly describing episodes of childhood abuse previously recounted in her 1978 book Mommy Dearest, as well as her 1981 stroke and subsequent recovery, Crawford goes on to look at the various reactions of abused and neglected children. They cover, she notes, "a wide range of dysfunctional behaviors." Very wide: homelessness, suicide, racism, overeating and unnecessary surgery are just a few of the 27 spokes on her "survivor's wheel." Here she projects childhood trauma into almost every conceivable societal or personal evil. It's already a stretch to cover these myriad of ills in such a short space and the text is further thinned by tangential subjects. So while Crawford may be perfectly good and right, she is rarely new or substantive. ("Unsterile, shared needles and unprotected sexual encounters spread AIDS.") Likewise, her recommendations are naively simplistic, whether on homelessness ("People with extra space in their homes could rent a room to someone who might otherwise end up on the street... Apartment projects could be cleaned up, organized for tenant self-government, and reclaimed from drug dealers.") or alcoholism ("Books are plentiful. Help is readily available if one wants it.").
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Crawford (Mommie Dearest, 1978, etc.) focuses on the family as the incubating ground for all the social and emotional ills for which psychologists and talk-show hosts have recently found names. Stalking, racism, sexism, terrorism, homelessness, pain, panic, sleep disorders, the state of having few friends: Crawford explains all of these and more in one rather slim volume. Under the always seductive rubric of ``Addictive Behaviors'' she includes not only alcoholism, gambling, and drugs but also love and religion. To which an ungenerous reader, sick of the facile application of psychobabble to the complex condition of being alive, might snarlingly add publishing. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
