Jealousy

Rating:
Summary: Lots of babble.
Review: I read 4 chapters of this book and could not continue. This book covers her history and relationships and other people's relationships. The book is also interspersed with quotes and ideas from famous people, such as Freud, and emotional discussions between herself and friends who work as pscyhologists, analysts, etc. and other friends and acquaintances. The book is poorly organized and rambles on and on in a highly melodramatic way. On one hand, the book serves as her vehicle to explore her own destructive feelings of jealousy and to mingle that with various personal experiences. The 2nd aspect of it is that she attributes the cause of these feelings of jealousy to experiences from infanthood--she attributes this idea to a contemporary of Freud.) Horrible read!!

Rating:
Summary: Lots of babble.
Review: It is impossible not to read this book and be deeply affected. It is impossible not to read this book and consciously, actively search for people in your life for whom this book had to be written for- and people in politics and the media, and anyone who has ever given you a bad day- ANYONE, but yourself. It is impossible to read this book and not find yourself at times trembling with being put in touch with your deepest insecurities, and the root causes which you have been denying for most if not all of your life.

It is, wonderfully enough, also impossible to read this and not feel a profound connection to the world. It is impossible to read this and not have a lasting respect and understanding of the common sense of Medeieval and Renaissance Catholics in European history, who made a point of teaching this most deadly of the seven deadly sins every week, if not every day, to their children, without needing Freud, the internet, or a degree from Harvard. It is impossible not to acknowledge your own anger or even contempt and hatred at that which you logically have no right to be in your life or society, or those for whom the world would expect you to be the most compassionate, while seeingthat everyone does exactly the same thing in some way.

Nancy Friday removes a lot of the veils and mystery over today's inexplicable suffering, from the seemingly sweet kind woman with the profoundly damaged children and destroyed marriage, to the erudite upwardly mobile socialites in prison for committing crimes of passion- to the everyday person like most of us, who somehow manages to push away everything we say we want, and damage it when we get it.

It is impossible not to be on the road to living a better, more enjoyable life after really reading this book with a humble heart.

Rating:
Summary: A moving, freeing book
Review: It is impossible not to read this book and be deeply affected. It is impossible not to read this book and consciously, actively search for people in your life for whom this book had to be written for- and people in politics and the media, and anyone who has ever given you a bad day- ANYONE, but yourself. It is impossible to read this book and not find yourself at times trembling with being put in touch with your deepest insecurities, and the root causes which you have been denying for most if not all of your life.

It is, wonderfully enough, also impossible to read this and not feel a profound connection to the world. It is impossible to read this and not have a lasting respect and understanding of the common sense of Medeieval and Renaissance Catholics in European history, who made a point of teaching this most deadly of the seven deadly sins every week, if not every day, to their children, without needing Freud, the internet, or a degree from Harvard. It is impossible not to acknowledge your own anger or even contempt and hatred at that which you logically have no right to be in your life or society, or those for whom the world would expect you to be the most compassionate, while seeingthat everyone does exactly the same thing in some way.

Nancy Friday removes a lot of the veils and mystery over today's inexplicable suffering, from the seemingly sweet kind woman with the profoundly damaged children and destroyed marriage, to the erudite upwardly mobile socialites in prison for committing crimes of passion- to the everyday person like most of us, who somehow manages to push away everything we say we want, and damage it when we get it.

It is impossible not to be on the road to living a better, more enjoyable life after really reading this book with a humble heart.

Rating:
Summary: About a lot more than just jealousy
Review: Nancy Friday makes easy going of a complex subject -- Object Relations Theory, which todays stands as the most complete (and therefore powerful) explanation of the human psyche. The title is catchy, but doesn't give the full flavor of the book. It's about _a lot_ more than just jealousy. Drawing upon myth, history, literature, psychological experiments and psycho-analytic theory, Friday lucidly illustrates the not-so-tangled relationships between envy, jealousy, hate, rage, admiration, denial, denigration, idealization, gratitude. . .it sounds complex, but isn't. This book is the best explanation of Object Relations Theory that I have yet encountered.