I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional: The Recovery Movement and Other Self-Help

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.

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 offers 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. When I first wrote this review, I suggested it be back in print. Now I ask Ms. Kaminer to come out with a second edition! Not only have I read it a few more times--and chuckled with recognition each time I reread it--but my spouse is a clinician. I see the courses she goes through. They are the most insubstantial, jargon-ridden piles of nonsense I've ever heard. Somehow it doesn't surprise me when I see that most attending the courses are from the most affluent suburbs of Washington, DC. People who take the stuff of which Kaminer writes are from the most affluent segments of the whole society...AND WE'RE SUPPOSED TO LEARN SOMETHING FROM THEM! Please, Wendy, come out with a second edition with additions of more New Age and "self-help" nonsense. We need to be informed!

One reason why Kaminer's book is so excellent is that she doesn't limit herself to the product of obvious flakes such as Werner Erhard and Shirley MacLaine but also goes after stuff taken seriously by millions of folks who are otherwise intelligent and reasonable -- books such as *The Road Less Traveled* and *People of the Lie*. Kaminer shows how their content, when it's not merely vapid, is wrong or even dangerous.Here's Kaminer on "discipline" and the power of evil, or rather on their description in *Road* and *Lie*:"'With total discipline we can solve all problems,' [Peck] promises in the opening pages ... and discipline itself is only a 'system of techniques.' As for evil, it is 'strangely ineffective as a social force,' which would surprise anyone who has even heard of genocide...."And now more on evil and discipline, from *Lie*. (Yes, evil -- which you'll remember is "strangely ineffective as a social force" and thus perhaps is of less concern to Peck's devotees than to the rest of us.)"Peck defines evil as 'the unsubmitted will ... it's almost tempting to think that the problem of evil lies in the will itself ..." There are only two states of being: submission to God and goodness or the refusal to submit to anything beyond one's own will -- which refusal automatically enslaves one to the forces of evil. Ultimately, the only good thing you can will is willingness."Liberals, romantics, and any student of totalitarianism may find this chilling. There is surely enough recent historical evidence associating submission, not independence of will, with enslavement to evil. In their eagerness to submit, not everyone can distinguish God from the devil."Bravo Wendy Kaminer! I'm sorry to note that this book is out of print. It should be back in print and continue to be widely available, not merely as a stern corrective to silliness but also as an antidote to the barely hidden danger of much pop psychology and pop religiosity.

Not since Mark Twain's fictional "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" have we had a chance to see hokum and superstition so delightfully trashed by a rational individual. In this case, Wendy Kaminer takes on all of the pseudo-science and pop psychology that surrounds the recovery movement.For example, she examines the claim that "All families are dysfunctional." As she points out, this is an empty statement. If it is a tautology (true by definition and not subject to testing), then it is uninteresting. However, if it is meant to be an empirical observation, then it has no basis in data (no one ever defined "dysfunctional," came up with a measurable indicator, and conducted a study).Also, her skewering of Stephen Covey, which is described in someone else's review, is priceless. She irrefutably exposes this best-selling emperor's intellectual nakedness.Beyond her exposure of the intellectual shortcomings of the recovery movement, Kaminer suggests that it fosters a political agenda that ignores real problems that are class and gender based. This is a more speculative thesis, and while I was not always in agreement, I found the argument stimulating and well worth examining.

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*.