Tara Bennett-Goleman

Bennett-Goleman weds two complementary disciplines, psychology and mindfulness, in a book designed to help us see and overcome maladaptive thought-behavioral patterns ('schemas' in the book's terminology) that we may be unconsciously repeating in our lives. Very similar to other books on cognitive behavioral therapy in its approach to untangling self-defeating thoughts and reactions, but I appreciated how the Buddhist/mindfulness perspective seems to deepen the message for me. I also appreciated the author's informal style and plentiful anecdotes from her own life and the cases of her clients. Seeing how others deal with similar issues and try to find more appropriate self-dialog and actions was instructive and helpful.… (altro)

The main focus of this book is a kind of psychotherapy based on the notion of schemas, which are habitual patterns of perceptions, emotions, reactions, etc. that get set generally at a young age in response to some kind of pattern of stress or abuse or trauma. By seeing clearly the patterns that trap us, we can gradually disentangle ourselves from them. There is clearly some kind of parallel or connection with Buddhist practice, and exploring this is the other main theme of the book.

The discussion of schema therapy is quite useful. There are lots of examples and the stages of working through these patterns is clearly elaborated. I remain rather unclear on the extent to which these patterns tend to fall into neat categories, versus being more of a multidimensional spectrum where the labels are more of an arbitrary division of a continuity. But this is not a very important distinction for practical purposes.

I find the connection with Buddhist practice to be very compelling but the further the book got into Buddhist notions, the more confused it seemed to get. I've been reasonably closely involved in the Buddhist scene for about 40 years, so by now I certainly have my own ways of understanding these notions. A lot of the problems come just from terminology. Equanimity often means just a kind of calmness. But in Buddhism, the word is most often used to mean a kind of relaxation of the distinction between friends and enemies, between those who are near and those who are far. Bennett-Goleman includes lots of great quotes from great teachers, but I didn't find them very coherently situated.

Another complaint I'd make... the penultimate sentence of the book reads: "One path leads to further entanglement, reactivity, and a thickening of the fog of confusion, the other toward the refinement of awareness and the unfolding of compassionate wisdom." I think this kind of sharp distinction between doing it right versus doing it wrong is not very helpful. There is also some discussion of relative versus ultimate truth earlier in the final chapters. This stuff gets very subtle. If a person starts to grab on to ultimate truth as something distinct from relative truth... eeek, methinks one has gone astray. Similarly... certainly there is a useful distinction to be made between more grasping and less grasping. But when you dig a bit deeper, a lot of practice is more progressive, more a matter of working from one stage to another stage, like climbing a ladder, where one grasps the next rung as one releases one's grasp on a previous rung. There are lots of effective ways to work with the challenges of one's reactive habits, confusion, etc. It's not really like a fork in the road. It's a lot vaster than that.

The schema bits of the book I found quite good. The Buddhist bits I found a bit scrambled. If the Buddhist bits inspire readers to dig deeper and to follow up with books by the authors quoted by Bennett-Goleman... they'll be very well served!… (altro)