The Power of Female Friendship: How Your Circle of Friends Shapes Your Life - Softcover

Dobransky, Paul; Stamford, L. A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0452289432 ISBN 13: 9780452289437

Publisher: Plume, 2008

Synopsis

A compassionate, practical, and science-based guide to finding friends for life

Psychiatrist Paul Dobransky, author of The Secret Psychology of How We Fall in Love, once again looks to the brain, this time to examine the full range of female friendships. A recent study has shown that women have fewer friends than they used to. In the years after college and before children (and even after that), many women find that they have fewer friends, and new ones are harder to make. Taking his three-parts-of-the-brain theory, Dr. Dobransky breaks down the primal codes of friendship that many women aren’t even aware of and gives scientifically grounded advice for understanding how to be a better friend and how to cultivate new friendships. Women of all ages who are searching for deeper relationships or are trying to break free of a toxic friendship will find help and hope in this enlightening and prescriptive exploration of how the brain makes friends.

About this title

About the Author

Paul Dobransky, M.D., is a board-certified psychiatrist, a former associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado, a national speaker, and business consultant. He has appeared on television numerous times and in a wide variety of print publications including USA Today, Marie Claire, and First for Women.

Reviews

Psychiatrist Dobransky applies the formulaic approach of his first book, The Secret Psychology of How We Fall in Love, to a subject of which he can have no firsthand knowledge: why women need friends for health and happiness. Using the pedestrian prose of his coauthor, Dobransky shares what he calls the secret code of friendship: consistent, mutual, shared positive emotion. The author continues to state the obvious when he says that negative emotion and stress are friendship killers, and he advises his readers to build up their internal self-esteem so that they won't appear needy to others. Dobransky's basic thesis—that women need to make friends in order to belong—is equally simplistic, and a more nuanced version has been expressed elsewhere, such as in Deborah Tannen's You Just Don't Understand, a source that Dobransky refers to but doesn't include in his bibliography. The repetitive and overcomplicated diagrams that appear on almost every page add little to the author's message. (May)
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Edition details

• Publisher: Plume
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0452289432
• ISBN 13: 9780452289437
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288