I tend to be ambivalent when it comes to the self-help genre. It's natural for someone in my field to feel this way, and my views have also been influenced by books like Sham: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless and I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional: The Recovery Movement and Other Self-Help. And yet, there are a few self-help books which speak to me and offer language for speaking to my clients. Overall, this was one of them.

Interestingly enough, I heard a speech at my synagogue over the weekend commenting that self-help books offer no new advice and are useless unless the reader commits himself to accepting responsibility for his choices. In fact this book's advice is arguably not new -- its points rest on the age-old premise that the only way to change your marriage is to stop trying to change your spouse and to work instead on your own issues. At the same time, the book offers some interesting insights in a highly readable tone, and even better, details several practical exercises to be done with or without your spouse, independent of a therapist, which can enhance your marriage. You need a bit of a tolerance for psychspeak dialogue, but the exercises were interesting and many sounded like they could be helpful. I found myself thinking back on several of the couples I've worked with and wishing I could have shared some of the information in this book with them.

I think this is a useful book for both therapists and laypeople interested in working on relationships.