Don't Be a Dick: Change Yourself, Change Your World

The single book therapists everywhere will recommend to all of their patients, because at some point or another, we all behave like dicks.

Why this book? Because you might be a dick: a mean-spirited, self-focused individual who thinks and acts as though everyone else in the world can only be understood—and whose only importance is defined—in terms of their relationship to you. Being a dick might feel powerful in the short term, but it is not helping you in the long term because this flawed character trait is exactly what’s keeping you from attaining what you may want most: personal fulfillment, satisfying work, a loving committed relationship, and lifelong friendships.

Anyone, at any time, can be a dick. Yet Don’t Be a Dick is especially for people who have noticed how their own behavior tends to backfire, leaving them feeling isolated and unsure why their seemingly justified actions consistently yield such poor results. If you’re constantly using the refrain, It’s not me, it’s them whenever something goes wrong, Mark Borg is here to tell you that it is, in fact, you. The good news is there is something you can do to reverse these behaviors and live a happier, more fulfilling life.

Mark B. Borg, Jr., PhD, is a community psychologist and psychoanalyst, founding partner of The Community Consulting Group, and a supervisor of psychotherapy at the William Alanson White Institute. He has been in private practice in New York City since 1998. Dr. Borg is the co-author of Irrelationship: How We Use Dysfunctional Relationships to Hide from Intimacy and its follow-up book, Relationship Sanity: Creating and Maintaining Healthy Relationships.