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Rating: 
Summary: Right on Target
Review: I have some reservations about this book; Kaminer is tone-deaf when it comes to the more subtle strains or spiritual thought. But she is right on the money in her criticism of the more self-pitying, materialistic self-help gurus out there. Her book is ditinguished by original reporting and her tough, clear prose is a joy to read. Before you shell out any more money to anyone who claims they can completely transform your life overnight, you must read this.
Rating:
Summary: the culture of self-pity gets its comeuppance
Review: If, like me, you've been simultaneously fascinated and appalled by the wares of the "self-help" or "psychology" sections of your local bookstore (or ubiquitous cyberbookstore), you'll enjoy seeing it dissected and skewered by Wendy Kaminer, the rare person to have applied her brain to this stuff (and someone who has even attended a variety of [fill in this blank] Anonymous meetings and other non-events).Nowhere does Kaminer deny that actual people get seriously screwed up by abusive parents, booze, dope, etc. What dismays her are the lack of perspective and the rejection of any use of a critical intelligence. What worries her are the tendencies of the therapists, gurus and quacks to reinforce and play on the helplessness of their paying customers. Kaminer is surprisingly generous to people whose activities she finds generally obnoxious, for example conceding that the most moronic TV shows occasionally illuminate real problems. This is an even-handed book from a writer who refreshingly says at the start: "I have only opinions and ideas; so although I imagine myself engaging in a dialogue with my readers, I don't imagine that we constitute a fellowship, based on shared experiences. Nor do I pretend to love my readers, any more than they love me and countless other strangers." It's a sad state of affairs when a writer feels compelled to say something this obvious. Many people will be dismayed by Kaminer's principled refusal to provide platitudinous or trite answers to the problems (real or imagined) of the day. They'll be happier with such opuscules as *Seven Habits of Highly Effective People*. Of this book, Kaminer asks, "what are the seven habits?" and quotes Covey: "In harmony with the natural laws of growth, they provide an incremental, sequential, highly integrated approach to the development of personal and interpersonal effectiveness.... They become the basis of the person's character, creating an empowering center of correct maps from which an individual can effectively solve problems, maximize opportunities, and continually learn and integrate other principles in an upward spiral of growth." -- and Kaminer comments: "I doubt that many readers know what this means (I don't), but they know how it makes them feel. Covey seduces them with all the right buzzwords: harmony, integrate, interpersonal, maximize, effectiveness, empowering (eventually he gets around to synergy). His peroration, the 'upward spiral of growth' (a phrase he repeats often), is uplifting, if you don't mind feeling like a corkscrew. Covey has a useful talent for saying nothing inspiringly; he should write commencement speeches." This wasn't the only point where I laughed out loud. *I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional* is a worthy successor to Mark Twain's *Christian Science*.
Rating:
Summary: Mostly functional trashing of self-help idiocy.
Review: Ms. Kaminer's superb trashing of the self-help movement is a much-needed book, even if readers have to suffer through the usual secular-humanist misreading of religion. The writer's primary crime in this department consists of the absurd comparison of 12-step meetings to revivalist meetings. Elsewhere, Kaminer simply reads too much into popular culture, searching for a significance that isn't there. "Maybe it's possible to use someone else's jargon to express your own thoughts. Maybe the jargon shapes the thought," she writes in regard to the common language of self-help meetings. Such mundane musings, fortunately, are redeemed by any number of devastating, on-target missiles aimed at the various idiocies, lies, psychobabble cliches, moral contradictions, and logical misfires of the monumentally moronic modern self-help movement. By the way, I spotted this title in the self-help section of a large bookstore chain. Talk about irony.
Rating:
Summary: Mostly functional trashing of self-help idiocy.
Review: Ms. Kaminer's superb trashing of the self-help movement is a much-needed book, even if readers have to suffer through the usual secular-humanist misreading of religion. The writer's primary crime in this department consists of the absurd comparison of 12-step meetings to revivalist meetings. Elsewhere, Kaminer simply reads too much into popular culture, searching for a significance that isn't there. "Maybe it's possible to use someone else's jargon to express your own thoughts. Maybe the jargon shapes the thought," she writes in regard to the common language of self-help meetings. Such mundane musings, fortunately, are redeemed by any number of devastating, on-target missiles aimed at the various idiocies, lies, psychobabble cliches, moral contradictions, and logical misfires of the monumentally moronic modern self-help movement. By the way, I spotted this title in the self-help section of a large bookstore chain. Talk about irony.
Rating: 
Summary: A Valuable Jeremiad
Review: This is not a comprehensive history or critique of the self-help movement, nor the last word on the culture of victimhood. It is a very well-written, short, entertaining "jeremiad" against that culture, however. I wish everyone would read it--our culture might gain some sense!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: What? It's no longer in print? Get those presses rolling! I first read this book after I'd been subjected to an "intervention," followed by "treatment" for alcohol. As nearly all of those in the "intervention" drank more than I--and still do--and the "treatment" was another temple to insurance mammon, I was a convert to a TRUE skeptic. And the experience compelled me to challenge many a pop psych concept and to read this fine volume. While I've read much of Kaminer's work since this book, and don't ALWAYS agree with her, this book describes much of the trendy trash which is selling as if there's nothing else to read. (Heaven help us, "The Celestine Prophecy" has sequels! ) I love the vacuuous quote from Steven Covey who's coming up with even more volumes of flatulence (and the "7 habits" of whom a friend recently observed are "nothing but a rehash of the 12 step programs!") Then, as other reviewers mention, there's M. Scott Peck's drivel and that of still another renowned, best-selling psychologist whose name escapes me now. Kaminer challenges his claim that those of us who may have been spanked by mommy when we were 2 are in the same boat with those who were in Pol Pot's concentration camps. Yeah, the guy actually said that. Oh, and that same psychologist has been notorious more recently for his sexual escapades with his groupies. The book a grand overview of the nonsense that pervades the affluent culture these days. For it, I thank Wendy Kaminer, and ask her publisher to print it again, and again.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: What? It's no longer in print? Get those presses rolling! I first read this book after I'd been subjected to an "intervention," followed by "treatment" for alcohol. As nearly all of those in the "intervention" drank more than I--and still do--and the "treatment" was another temple to insurance mammon, I was a convert to a TRUE skeptic. And the experience compelled me to challenge many a pop psych concept and to read this fine volume. While I've read much of Kaminer's work since this book, and don't ALWAYS agree with her, this book describes much of the trendy trash which is selling as if there's nothing else to read. (Heaven help us, "The Celestine Prophecy" has sequels! ) I love the vacuuous quote from Steven Covey who's coming up with even more volumes of flatulence (and the "7 habits" of whom a friend recently observed are "nothing but a rehash of the 12 step programs!") Then, as other reviewers mention, there's M. Scott Peck's drivel and that of still another renowned, best-selling psychologist whose name escapes me now. Kaminer challenges his claim that those of us who may have been spanked by mommy when we were 2 are in the same boat with those who were in Pol Pot's concentration camps. Yeah, the guy actually said that. Oh, and that same psychologist has been notorious more recently for his sexual escapades with his groupies. The book a grand overview of the nonsense that pervades the affluent culture these days. For it, I thank Wendy Kaminer, and ask her publisher to print it again, and again.
Rating:
Summary: A warning against the appeal of totalitarianism
Review: Yes, the "recovery" movement often goes too far, what with the now discredited "recovered memory" fad wreaking havoc on innocent people. Kaminer, however, seems to have an atheist agenda in her criticism. You really can't compare Scott Peck to Shirley Maclaine. That is like comparing a meal at Charlie Trotter's to a frozen TV dinner. But to Kaminer, what is spiritual is ipso facto delusional and bogus. Kaminer is trapped in her left brain and it shows. What could be an interesting critique of the excesses of the recovery and New Age movements is ruined by Kaminer's atheistic biases. Remember this is the woman who wrote "The Last Taboo" in PRAISE of atheism (!) in The New Republic. Wake up, Wendy - 90% of Americans believe in a God/Supreme Being of one kind or another and prosyletizing in praise of atheism will not win you many friends outside of New York intelligentsia circles.
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