Choice Theory: A New Psychology of Personal Freedom - Softcover

William Glasser M.D.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060930144 ISBN 13: 9780060930141

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers, 1999

Synopsis

Dr. William Glasser offers a new psychology that, if practiced, could reverse our widespread inability to get along with one another, an inability that is the source of almost all unhappiness.

For progress in human relationships, he explains that we must give up the punishing, relationship–destroying external control psychology. For example, if you are in an unhappy relationship right now, he proposes that one or both of you could be using external control psychology on the other. He goes further. And suggests that misery is always related to a current unsatisfying relationship. Contrary to what you may believe, your troubles are always now, never in the past. No one can change what happened yesterday.

About this title

Review:

Southern California psychiatrist William Glasser, the author of Reality Therapy, believes that almost all human misery is caused by people trying to control others. In fact, he says, the only behavior we can control is our own; by the same token, no one can make us do anything we don't want to. It's only when we give up spending our energy trying to force others to conform to our ideas or to keep them from doing the same to us that we are able to live the way we want to. Glasser makes this somewhat difficult material easier to understand with examples and case studies from his own practice. For instance, he tells a man whose wife has left him that his only choices are to change what he wants her to do or to change the way he is dealing with her. While doing these things will not necessarily bring his wife back, Glasser says, it will certainly make him feel better. "When we actually begin to realize that we can control only our own behavior, we immediately start to redefine our personal freedom and find, in many instances, that we have much more freedom than we realize," Glasser writes.

From the Back Cover:

In "Choice Theory," Dr. William Glasser offers readers a new and far more effective way to get along with the people in our lives. He explains convincingly that, barring severe poverty or untreatable illness, unsatisfying or disconnecting relationships are the source of almost all crime, addiction, and mental illness, as well as marital, family, and school failure. For progress in human relationships, he explains that we must give up the punishing, relationship-destroying external control psychology that is by far the dominant one in the world. in one of this century's most significant books on psychology, Dr. Glasser offers us choice theory, a noncontrolling psychology that gives us freedom to sustain the relationships that lead to healthy, productive lives.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0060930144
• ISBN 13: 9780060930141
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368