Something really interesting has surfaced in connection with this thread. I'll explain below.
Quote
Hope
See, right from the start Dr. Logic is talking in absolutes
Yes. The "Dr." also insisted that hostility was really fear. How about hostility is hostility and fear is fear? How about distinguishing them? How about having them co-exist, rather than one canceling the other out?
Quote
Dr. Logic
Since then, I've heard several psychologists say that hostility conceals fear. "Great anger is great fear," says one cognitive behavioral therapist.
A Google search reveals that a therapist named A.B. Curtiss said this. ("Great anger is great fear"? Seems like a grand oversimplification to me.) A.B. Curtiss is the controversial author of "Depression Is A Choice".
Amazon.com provides the following mini-review of "Depression Is A Choice" by Publishers Weekly:
Quote
In overwritten, overlong text, Curtiss (Time of the Wild), a cognitive behavioral therapist, author of children's books and contributing writer to the New York Times, etc., explains how to overcome depression without drugs. The suggestions herein stem chiefly from her personal experience: her periods of deep depression, followed by manic incidents that led her, for example, to launch poorly conceived business ventures that lost money. She also, somewhat capriciously, left her husband and children for a year to live in an ashram. She explains how she freed herself from years of ups and downs by following her own program of "directed thinking." According to Curtiss, as soon as one becomes aware of depressed or manic feelings, one must "as an act of will, replace the accidental, unchosen thoughts that have caused the problem with new, positive, neutral or commonsense thoughts or actions." Even in cases resulting from chemical imbalances in the brain, contends Curtiss, it's simply a question of learning how to employ the mind. She feels strongly that prescription drugs coupled with "psychologized thinking" (i.e. the Freudian premise that "the mind and the self... are one and the same") will only mask, not help with depression. Curtiss also emphasizes the importance of traditional family values versus the current pursuit of individual happiness. However one feels about Curtiss's ideas, "directed thought" comes off as a murky offshoot of standard therapy; wading through the author's convoluted thought processes may cause rather than cure depression.
Another review of A.B. Curtiss's book is from Christian Perring, Ph.D. of MentalHelp.Net. He kicks off his review by saying, "I can't remember the last time I read such an exasperating book." For Dr. Perring's full review, see:
[[url=http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?id=779&type=book&cn=4]www.mentalhelp.net[/url]]
I took a look inside the book (see
books.google.com and
Chapter 1 on the author's website) and found some interesting info:
"I went home, called the airline for tickets, and just up and left my family completely for a year to seek enlightenment at the ashram of an Indian guru."Suddenly leaving one's family for a whole year? So guess who her guru was? The notorious Osho, aka Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Wow.
"Let me illustrate the idea of moral imperative by my first firewalk, that mainstay of traveling hypnotists and motivational gurus."Firewalk? Her first one? How many did she do? With whom did she do firewalking? Was it "motivational guru" Tony Robbins?
"But I beat them to the punch and got a lawyer at the ashram (from the staff of thirty lawyers who were also followers of this particular guru)...."She needed a lawyer? What for? (I have ideas as to why Osho/Rajneesh needed thirty lawyers!)
"My own brain chemistry is such that still I wake up almost every morning in deep despair, although it usually lasts only three or four minutes once I employ simple mind tricks. I am seldom troubled this way by depression in the late afternoon or evening, unless I take a nap. Anytime I take a nap, I am likely to wake up in the black hole. But I no longer panic and fear drowning."If someone wakes up nearly every morning in deep despair and is "usually" able to use "mind tricks" to snap out of it.... as long as they don't take a nap.... I just wonder how well the author's proposed cure really works? And what if she is inaccurate about how often she feels despair?
I think this warrants further investigation. I've just ordered a used copy of A.B. Curtiss's book from Amazon and hope to be reading it before long. To be continued....
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 02/06/2010 03:05AM by helpme2times.