Rating: 
Summary: The Must-Have Guide for Self-Helpers
Review: As a navel-gazing self-help junkie, I was surprised and a little annoyed when I discovered this book -- after all, I thought to myself, who can tell me what I can or cannot do? Never mind that I was overwhelmed with boatloads of conflicting information -- I didn't think ANYONE had the answers, and that it was necessary to try everything once. Well, thank God for Dr. Seligman. The book is a brilliantly simple yet deep exploration of the research available on treatments for various conditions -- and it turns out that there ARE answers available regarding what works and what doesn't. (And what you shouldn't even bother trying.) This book is a valuable resource for anyone trying to make sense of the self-help and treatment industries.
Rating:
Summary: 300 pages of old-fashioned common sense.
Review: I don't even remember how I came by this book, I've had it so long. As a former self-help junkie, I can say this book did more to get my head out of my you-know-where than all the others put together. Seligman shows that human beings have a wide range of "normal" in terms of our emotions. He shows how to acknowledge who we are and why we feel the way we do, and then learn how that emotional range helps us. So reasonable, and incredibly reassuring and helpful. This guy is no flash-in-the pan busy preening for the Oprah show. He is a realist. I wish I'd had this book when I was 21. Life would have been so much easier.
Rating:
Summary: A Helpful Book for negative thoughts and feelings
Review: I work with "at risk youth", kids in the foster care system, socially disadvantaged and many who have suffered abuse. I have often wondered how to help kids who suffer from depression, anxiety, Post Traumatic Stress, etc. This book is very helpful because it describes the world view that will give kids resiliency skills, and help them overcome the emotional difficulties they have. It also describes what can't be changed, and how to deal with those aspects of emotional disturbance, clinically. This book offers validity to what I have observed professionally. Mostly, it offers a practical means of knowing how to address the problems I encounter with the kids I work with, and how to teach the kids how to help themselves. Seligman offers a perspective that is based on science and Biological Psychiatry. It's about time psychology moved in this direction.
Rating: 
Summary: Half the story-And not particularly the better half
Review: Seligman is the guy who electrocuted dogs without giving them a chance to find a strategy to avoid the shocks,then lapsed into a state equivalent to "depression, and then came up with the "original" insight that helplessness leads to despair. This sort of experimentation reminds me of those high I.Q., low emotional intelligence kids I grew up with who cut worms in half to see if they could survive. I don't rule out all psychological research, for example, the Milgram study on obedience did result in some pretty interesting findings about humans and authority, but Seligman's "insights" seem pretty lame to me and his methods were cruel as well. This book includes questionnaires to assess your own optimism/pessimism quotient, and then provides alternative cognitions to make yourself feel better. This part is OK but no different than dozens of other books on the market nowadays. But his basic interpretations and conclusions about etiology are fairly lame. For example, he now refutes Freud's view that depression is anger turned inward or that it results from childhood trauma and has replaced it with old fashioned trait theory--i.e., some people are more prone to depression and pessimism and the reification of the term "learned helplessness" as an explanatory principle for hopelessness and despair. Why one conceptual model refutes the other isn't quite clear to me particularly when you consider that a "bad childhood" would be caused by a lack of power and control in a dysfunctional environment, which to me sounds like learned helplessness anyway. Seligman also puts forth a thesis which can easily become a self-fulfilling prophesy. By saying you can't change certain things can make you feel as though you shouldn't bother. He claims reliving childhood trauma doesn't "cure" one of "neurosis." Well, sorry Marty, It cured me, so either I'm delusional or making a false attribution, or Seligman has made another faulty generalization. But since I don't have "hard" data; odd isn't that the field of statistics when applied to humans is considered "hard data" when it uses the most abstract of symbols, i.e., numbers, which have little to do with lived experience. It was such hard data that allowed Lord Kelvin to "prove" the solar system was several hundred thousand years old--only off by a 6 billion or so. Seligman's mechanistic approach to human motivation also never addresses the "unscientific" experiences of personal epiphany, inspiration, and the "naive" concepts of belief, will power, or spiritual awakening as elements that can impact traits. Finally, I find it odd that Seligman researched life-insurance salespersons and discovered that those who were most persistent in the face of rejection make the most sales. Well, surprise, surprise! How about doing a study whether success among life insurance salespeople is correlated with their ability to create a sense of fear and helplessness in the perspective client to sell him/her insurance? In "Take the Money and Run," Woody Allen, after going to jail, is punished when he incurs an infraction by having to spend time in solitary with an insurance salesman. Maybe a perspective on psychology without a grounding in moral philosophy is de rigeur but it scares the hell out of me.
Rating:
Summary: 300 pages of old-fashioned common sense.
Review: The author holds to scientific research data "somewhat" contradicting the prevailing notions of the self excellence literature. So you can't change too much after all.Mr Seligman is a sort of contrarian in his writings. He likes voicing a separate standpoint. This makes for a good reading. His book on fighting depression with blaming every mishappening on outside world was a mixed blessing though. Effective but dangerous recipee - cures depression but then makes you self-indulgent and you stop your growth.
Rating:
Summary: Reference
Review: This book is a good reference, both for experts and clients in the councelling field.
Both groups: Please be realistic and set up short term goals first.
Martin Seligman supports you to emphasis on the important things and become empowerned to make prioritizations yourself.
Rating:
Summary: Extraordinary - Do yourself a favor - Order this book - NOW
Review: This is a book that everyone should own. In this book, Dr. Seligman wades through the swamp of self-help, psycho-babble,new-age gurus, common-sense ideas that "everyone" knows , medical thought, etc, etc in order to discover- WHAT REALLY WORKS. Not what we wish would work, not what seems like it should work, not what common wisdom believes works but what in clinical trials of real people has been demonstrated to work. What percentage has been helped, what are the side-effects and has this help been long-term or transitory. It is extremely readable, instructive and down to earth. He addresses the current state of treatment for: Anxiety, panic attacks, phobias, obsessions, depression, anger, post-traumatic stress, sex, dieting, alcohol. For most of these topics I learned more in his one chapter than in the several books which I have read on them. If you are on a diet, about to begin a diet, or considering professional help in one of the areas above - please read the chapter in this book first. You will save yourself an incredible amount of time, money and heartbreak in the long run. It will also give you the best chance of actually solving the problem since you will be directed towards the most effective treatment right from the beginning of treatment rather than (hopefully) eventually finding it by trial and error. I only hope that Dr Seligman writes an updated version of this book sometime in the near future in order to keep up with new research findings.
Rating:
Summary: Extraordinary - Do yourself a favor - Order this book - NOW
Review: This is a book that everyone should own. In this book, Dr. Seligman wades through the swamp of self-help, psycho-babble,new-age gurus, common-sense ideas that "everyone" knows , medical thought, etc, etc in order to discover- WHAT REALLY WORKS. Not what we wish would work, not what seems like it should work, not what common wisdom believes works but what in clinical trials of real people has been demonstrated to work. What percentage has been helped, what are the side-effects and has this help been long-term or transitory. It is extremely readable, instructive and down to earth. He addresses the current state of treatment for: Anxiety, panic attacks, phobias, obsessions, depression, anger, post-traumatic stress, sex, dieting, alcohol. For most of these topics I learned more in his one chapter than in the several books which I have read on them. If you are on a diet, about to begin a diet, or considering professional help in one of the areas above - please read the chapter in this book first. You will save yourself an incredible amount of time, money and heartbreak in the long run. It will also give you the best chance of actually solving the problem since you will be directed towards the most effective treatment right from the beginning of treatment rather than (hopefully) eventually finding it by trial and error. I only hope that Dr Seligman writes an updated version of this book sometime in the near future in order to keep up with new research findings.
Rating:
Summary: good content, but mostly commonly known information
Review: This is a decent book, however I found a lot of the content to be either common sense, common knowledge, or something you could easily find yourself doing minimal research. However, it is nice to have all of the information presented in one place without having to go looking different places for it. It has a nice summary of everything it covers in the back of the book along with the results of various treatments. If you want to know more about common ailments and their respective treatments, such as dieting, trauma, alcoholism, anxiety, depression, anger, and many more things, then this book would be a good source of information. This book basically briefly discusses these things, and others, and talks about the different treatment options that are available for each and what the statistical data is for the success of the different available treatments. An interesting read, but I wouldn't buy it expecting it to change my life. I would recommend this book for someone who knows they have one of these problems and wants to know what options they have in regards to different treatments and what the typical results of those treatments are. Although you should keep in mind that nothing in this book is anything you couldn't find through your own research.
Rating:
Summary: good content, but mostly commonly known information
Review: This is a decent book, however I found a lot of the content to be either common sense, common knowledge, or something you could easily find yourself doing minimal research. However, it is nice to have all of the information presented in one place without having to go looking different places for it. It has a nice summary of everything it covers in the back of the book along with the results of various treatments. If you want to know more about common ailments and their respective treatments, such as dieting, trauma, alcoholism, anxiety, depression, anger, and many more things, then this book would be a good source of information. This book basically briefly discusses these things, and others, and talks about the different treatment options that are available for each and what the statistical data is for the success of the different available treatments. An interesting read, but I wouldn't buy it expecting it to change my life. I would recommend this book for someone who knows they have one of these problems and wants to know what options they have in regards to different treatments and what the typical results of those treatments are. Although you should keep in mind that nothing in this book is anything you couldn't find through your own research.
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