The Courage to be Disliked

I got this as an audiobook and…. as a psychiatrist listening to this… I found this annoying and a reminder of why I don’t like so-called “self help” books but to its credit, it doesn’t claim to be able to solve your problems or take a how-to approach and at its core, its message is that you need to do the work if you want to figure out what you want and how to find happiness.

It’s mostly based on the work of Alfred Adler who was a psychiatrist and psychotherapist in the era of Freud and Jung. It takes the stance that we have agency to determine our future without it being solely determined by our past; an effort to try and get you to stop holding onto the past as an excuse or a limitation you place on yourself.

It also takes an interpersonal focus where it sees all problems are relationship problems which is a not dissimilar premise to interpersonal therapy which is evidence based in depression, anxiety and eating disorders among some other mental disorders. It goes on to talk about how if we learn to love ourselves the we can find our place within a community (if you can’t love yourself etc).

However, I also found it wrong and problematic on many fronts, because when you allude to people’s future being entirely within your control then you start blaming people for their own unhappiness. As a psychiatrist I come from the perspective of working with people with mental illness and it basically blames people for their own sadness, their own anxiety, for not “letting go” of their own trauma or even questioning the existence of trauma.

So no. Not for me. Next!