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Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence Paperback – July 31, 2000
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- Print length352 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBloomsbury Pub Ltd
- Publication dateJuly 31, 2000
- Dimensions5.08 x 0.83 x 7.8 inches
- ISBN-100747538352
- ISBN-13978-0747538356
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Product details
- Publisher : Bloomsbury Pub Ltd; New edition (July 31, 2000)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 352 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0747538352
- ISBN-13 : 978-0747538356
- Item Weight : 10.2 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.08 x 0.83 x 7.8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #640,812 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #835 in Violence in Society (Books)
- #17,015 in Psychology & Counseling
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Gavin de Becker is a three-time presidential appointee whose pioneering work has changed the way our government evaluates threats to our nation's highest officials. His firm advises many of the world's most prominent media figures, corporations, and law enforcement agencies on predicting violence, and it also serves regular citizens who are victims of domestic abuse and stalking. De Becker has advised the prosecution on major cases, including the O.J. Simpson murder trial. He has testified before many legislative bodies and has successfully proposed new laws to help manage violence.
Customer reviews
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Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonTop reviews from the United States
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This book made all the difference. So many times women who have been attacked/raped describe how nice their attacker seemed seconds before. When I saw that his eyes had turned black and he had zero interest in that dog (who I think was a prop to get women to respond to him), I knew I had to get out and I did, thank God. Please buy this book and share-- it doesn't matter that it's 20 years old-- same thing applies today and then.
Discernment is key to professional growth. In that regard, this book may be a gift to theunn reader.
I also greatly appreciate the author's discussion of the origins of fear and how important it has been in allowing mankind to develop. In addition to the twenty years I spent in law enforcement, I am also a Certified Body Language trainer and teach the power of nonverbal communication. As research has shown, what we call women's intuition is in reality the fact that women, on average, are far better at picking up nonverbal cues than men. That "intuition" was absolutely essential for the females of our species to survive in a very hostile world, where they were of slighter stature and needed to quickly detect threats around them. As the primary caregiver to children they also needed to be able to effectively interpret the cues and needs of infants and small children before spoken language.
One interesting study involved showing short film clips with the sound turned off to groups of men and women. Women scored an incredible 87% accuracy in evaluating the situation shown in the video. Afraid guys we only scored 42%. fMRI scans reveal women use 14-16 regions of their brains during communication, while men only 4-6 areas (most women probably would dispute giving us that much credit-:)
In modern society, in the interest of being "polite", we often suppress our natural intuition, our gut feelings. Back in my police career we didn't even have a term called Body Language. We only knew it as "street-smarts". One of my great fears has to do with my beautiful wife's suppression of her natural intuition around strangers, in the interest of being polite and non-judgemental. The nature of my our respective careers requires us to live in a dense urban area, surrounded by all sorts of threats. Dark parking lots, underground garages, elevators and streets filled with street people and drug addicts. While our building is very secure, once you are on the streets it's a whole different ball game. She has terrific intuition when she uses it. She is like a perfectly honed tuning fork when she is willing to trust her intuition, but due to her kind and trusting nature, she often suppresses it in the interest of being all-inclusive and accepting.
Gavin de Becker's loud message to women, Trust your gut, Don't suppress your intuition, Don't worry about hurting some stranger's feelings is a powerful one. It is my hope that my wife and every woman will be willing to read the book, reflect on all the powerful stories in The Gift of Fear, including the author's personal story.
Top reviews from other countries
Instead of buying this book and wading through his self-promotion you could just tell yourself "be more alert in dangerous situations and act if you feel threatened" the end result is the same....
The premise of the book, in a nutshell, is: trust your instincts. The author takes you through the way your brain processes threats and the fact that, to your brain, it's a binary matter - stay or get the hell out of there. It doesn't consider that you need to know the ins and outs of why there is a threat, you just need to know that's the situation is dangerous and you need to do something about it. It highlights how the analytical part of your brain is too slow and by the time you realise why you are in danger it could be too late. The author takes the reader through a number of scenarios where the victim's life is saved by trusting their instincts and then breaks them down so that you can see what the warning signs were - warning signs missed by the conscious mind but picked up by the subconscious.
From there, the book takes the subject of risk very wide and includes advice on how to deal with obsessive people and stalkers and details their mindsets.
There is far too much to go into in an Amazon review but suffice to say The Gift of Fear provides an excellent guide to the psychology of people you would be better off avoiding and why, if you get a bad feeling about a person or a situation, you are probably right.
The Gift of Fear is highly readable. De Becker makes frequent use of anecdotes to highlight his principles and this prevents the book from becoming too bogged down in technical detail. I have read this book about four times now and I refer back to parts of it frequently. I do not consider myself to be particularly academic so most people should not find it to be too hard going. It is a solid, practical guide to risk, how to spot it, and why understanding what the risk is, is something best considered afterwards from a safe distance. It's extremely useful for keeping yourself safe but also provides a number of principles that can be used to advise others.










