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Rating: 
Summary: Excellant
Review: Provides a valuable insight into the world of families and the roles that people play. Both very interesting and informative
Rating: 
Summary: Extremely Interesting.
Review: Rather than offering solutions to family problems, the book offers interesting insights into how families function. Particularly the Timberlawn (or was it Timberlake, I don't have my copy handy) Instute's experiments on that unknown, and perhaps no longer unknowable, quantity 'romantic attraction' that gets relationships started was fascinating, as it must be to many perennial singles. In this experiment participants were asked to choose the most likely mate from a room-full of strangers, and, Skynner claims, people of like family back-ground turned out to pick each other. I was intrigued, but do not buy into the concept without further research. No family is regular; and the idea of 'like family back-ground' is vulnerable to lack of falsifiability - is a deceased parent sufficient to constitute 'like family back-ground'? Also, real life knows many one-sided attractions, where these spring from, we don't find out. Nonetheless, research into what constitutes attraction, and how relationships get started (and continue, of course), are as important a contribution to human happiness as can be conceived, and Cleese's sense of humor makes it all digestible.
Rating:
Summary: it's an eye-opener
Review: The book definitely gave me more of an understanding about human beings. It very clearly addresses the fact that children are not just little people ---unless the grown-ups you know are stuck in some early stage developmental quagmire. I really like the cartoons--they made me laugh aloud-- and John Cleese's sense of humor. I recommend the book as a primer for becomming more adult and for developing more understanding yourself and your choices.
Rating:
Summary: Why didn't anyone tell me about all that before?
Review: This book is one of the rare "ha" books out there! No stupid little behavioral reciepes like "look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself how much yourself". Yet very clearly explained observations about how one grows up to fit in a family pattern and to reproduce it in adult life. And John Cleese's humour makes it fun to read... Definitely a keeper for anyone not happy with their life and actively trying to change for the better...
Rating:
Summary: Laugh at yourself - then understand!
Review: This book was recommended to us by a psychotherapist when we came to discuss family problems. It was a great help through the first few weeks of therapy - and progress followed rapidly. Psychoanalysis never had such a coherent explanation!And the voice of John Cleese makes a great delivery for the info. Bravo!
Rating:
Summary: Laugh at yourself - then understand!
Review: This book was recommended to us by a psychotherapist when we came to discuss family problems. It was a great help through the first few weeks of therapy - and progress followed rapidly. Psychoanalysis never had such a coherent explanation!And the voice of John Cleese makes a great delivery for the info. Bravo!
Rating: 
Summary: Useful, but weirdly dated
Review: This is a useful, humorous, non-pompous book for people seeking insight into the workings of (please note) Western, nuclear-style, fairly conventional families. Skynner is a genial, compassionate man who has obviously enjoyed his career in family therapy and doesn't have much of an ax to grind, while Cleese's wry interjections help give perspective. Particularly praiseworthy are vignettes from Skynner's practice in which he shows how a malfunctioning family system can be nudged toward better health by precipitating very small changes in behavioral styles, without excess angst or struggles with dragons. I also appreciate his focus, common also to Eric Berne and Michele Weiner-Davis (see their books), on finding and embracing what works rather than dwelling on what does not. For people trying to enjoy the best about their families and especially younger children, this book could solve a number of frustrating mysteries. Likewise, it's useful for grasping the ways that certain behaviors and types of people feel attractive and comfortable, and why some situations "push the buttons" of an individual or within a relationship. I do have some caveats. While not Freudian in any strict sense, Skynner occasionally seems to share the reductionist attitudes of "the Master," leaving you with the feeling that every human interaction and achievement is no more than the search for fulfilment of a parlayed (and frustrated) infant or toddler. True as this can be in everyday situations, I feel that it is not the whole picture and should be balanced by writers examining the human urge to evolve to a more aware, creative and functional state. Thwarting of this urge seems to me a source of a significant number of human conflicts, in or out of the family context, not to be resolved solely through reflecting on one's (non)progress through various developmental stages. Maslow, James Hillman and Robert Anton Wilson come to mind. Especially, my jaw drops when Skynner sets forth his views on the development of homosexuality. I can't remember the last time I heard any otherwise credible and humane writer ascribe homosexual orientation to problems in bonding or detaching with a parent of whichever gender. The more gay people I know, and the longer that gay people are free to live openly in various pockets of American society without fear of crippling social sanctions, the more apparent it seems to me that a few gay people within a straight majority are just part of nature's plan. Studies of animal behavior, brain structures and potential genetic links support this view. So I'm dead amazed to see Skynner, otherwise not terribly doctrinaire, still discussing homosexual orientation, certainly not with any kind of punitive moralizing, but as if it were a kind of arrested development that could/should be "treated" for maximum happiness. But then, no book on human behavior is the perfect answer to all your dreams of insight. Nothing is drearier than the person who has read one book looking beneath the surface of human conflicts and believes he/she has found the guru with all the answers, so take this book for what it's worth--kind, commonsensical and applicable to many families you probably know--and don't stop investigating.
Rating:
Summary: Married? Read at least the first five pages.
Review: Underlying Cleese's (Of Monty Python, etc) wit has evidently been lots of therapy and divorce court ("...divorce is underrated." he says tongue in cheek). Co-author Skynner engages Cleese in realistic dialogue about it all. Some inside dope from the therapy biz. Reading in this has provided important shades of grey in my marriage. Interesting incidental angles on what-makes-comedians-tick.
Rating:
Summary: Great, with one health warning
Review: Very helpful book for understanding the mysteries of family dynamics, how they contribute to making you what you are, and how you are passing them on. Dialogue style is very different, (they recap at the end of every chapter), but this saves the text from become dry. Health warning?-beware using this book as fuel for blaming your parents/family for everything that's wrong with you! We all go through that stage, but the real value here is self-awareness that can be then be used to take control of your own life going forward.
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