Hi,

Bought this book only today, so can't yet give an extensive review but so far it strikes me as a very helpful resource, worth mentioning, especially on the "taking personal inventory" board.

More info available at: www.schematherapy.com/id202.htm

I came across the name of Jeffrey Young due to researching appropriate therapy approaches for people with BPD. He's the "Schema" guy and this is a "Schema" book written for the general public. A BPD could use it, and so could a NON... .have a look and let me know what you think... .

Cheers,

gh444

I recently read this, and it gave me several  moments. I believe the things it taught me about my own life were important and will continue to be useful.

Pros:

--It's structured using Young's unique way of categorizing the effects of our early child experiences -- what some call schemas; in this book they're called Lifetraps.

--I found that I matched three (of the dozen or so) Lifetraps, and the chapters describing them made sense to me.

--I'll speculate that the other Lifetraps are probably equally valuable for the people who match them, and that they cover most situations.

--It should be possible, therefore, for anyone to do a sort of 'poor person's overview' of their own worst psychological tangles, and get some understanding of how they may begin to untangle them.

Cons:

--I found the examples of how their clients improved to be less relevant to me. Everybody is different, and just knowing what the problem structure is doesn't mean it's possible to solve it easily (although knowing it is a good start).

--The style is a bit too 'rah rah' pop-psych for me. Young is a serious researcher (and his later work is directed at therapists), so I think this does the book a disservice. It has a lot of good content in it.

Ranking it beside the five books about BPD/NPD I ordered and read recently,

and basing my ranking on the usefulness to me personally, I'd say, ranking out of 10:

8 - Understanding The Borderline Mother (Lawson)

8 - Reinventing Your Life (Young and Klosko)

8 - The Narcissistic Family (Pressman and Donaldson-Pressman)

5 - Walking On Eggshells 2nd Edition (Mason and Kreger)

3 - disarming the narcissist (Behary)

The top three all seemed to have unique things to say to me that I hadn't yet figured out even after many years of searching on my own and several months of reading on the BPD site. The last two, in contrast, seemed to have little that I didn't already know. They also had some irritating formatting and stylistic habits, the last one moreso.

PP