Cherishment : A Psychology of the Heart

Rating:
Summary: Huh?
Review: As one who considers myself part of the prevailing cultural criticism of Freud I did not expect a pleasant read from a book in which his speculations play such a large role. But Young-Bruehl and Bethelard use Freud's solid ground of insights into the human mind to set sail on a voyage both east and west, ancient and modern. They generously take the reader along on their journey, gratuities included in the ticket price. Cherishment is more than a pleasant read. The book is an adventure for the reader/explorer interested in the ways in which we think about love, intimacy, dependency and primary needs. Voyagers meet an assortment of other pilgrims like Michael Balint, Akhilleus and a little known Japanese psychoanalyst named Takeo Doi. We learn to consider language and the ways its usage forms our understanding of our world. We eavesdrop on some patient sessions and are allowed in to some of the authors very personal dreams. Most interesting is the dialogue between the authors who challenge and compliment each other to advance an idea about our primary need to cherish and be cherished.

Rating:
Summary: Freud, and then some.
Review: As one who considers myself part of the prevailing cultural criticism of Freud I did not expect a pleasant read from a book in which his speculations play such a large role. But Young-Bruehl and Bethelard use Freud's solid ground of insights into the human mind to set sail on a voyage both east and west, ancient and modern. They generously take the reader along on their journey, gratuities included in the ticket price. Cherishment is more than a pleasant read. The book is an adventure for the reader/explorer interested in the ways in which we think about love, intimacy, dependency and primary needs. Voyagers meet an assortment of other pilgrims like Michael Balint, Akhilleus and a little known Japanese psychoanalyst named Takeo Doi. We learn to consider language and the ways its usage forms our understanding of our world. We eavesdrop on some patient sessions and are allowed in to some of the authors very personal dreams. Most interesting is the dialogue between the authors who challenge and compliment each other to advance an idea about our primary need to cherish and be cherished.

Rating:
Summary: Huh?
Review: I was disappointed in this one...I found Cherishment to be a disconcerting and frustrating mix of technical jargon and rambling stream of consciousness. I'm big into self-discovery and learning about how psychothereapy works these days, and certainly understanding the role that cherishment (or lack thereof) plays in the individual and in society at large sounds valuable and interesting, but the authors make you work too hard for too little. The only interesting parts were the segments on the author's patients where they got into some real concrete discussions and examples about the effect of lack of cherishment on these individuals.

Rating:
Summary: Crucial Subject--Disappointing Delivery
Review: The authors' central points are that cherishment (taken from Takeo Doi's "amae") is important, that it is discernable all around us, and that it is not privileged enough, especially in the west. Unfortunately, the reader has to wander through a mercifully short volume of extravagantly self-indulgent personal anecdotes, jumbled clinical material and disjointed theoretical observations-all awkwardly segued-to reach these rather modest conclusions on a topic that deserves so much more. There are some intriguing observations on cherishment themes in Homer, the I-Ching, Taoism, and some incisive discussions here and there about how cherishment has factored (or failed to factor) in the western study of personality, particularly psychoanalysis. But these insights only serve to frustrate because they are cursory and indicate that these authors, if they were differently disposed, could have actually delivered much more in substance, depth, and integration. Overall, a sloppy book which fails to really do justice to the topic and does not, in my view, give near enough credit to the attention cherishment themes(a.k.a., secure base, maternal preoccupation, primary love, unconditional regard, mirroring-idealization, rapprochement, etc) have received among a range of psychoanalytic thinkers and developmental researchers.