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Imperfect Control: Our Lifelong Struggles With Power and Surrender
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In her remarkable national bestseller, Necessary Losses, Judith Viorst explored how we are shaped by the various losses we experience throughout our lives. Now, in her wise and perceptive new book, Imperfect Control, she shows us how our sense of self and all our important relationships are colored by our struggles over control: over wanting it and taking it, loving it and
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Paperback, 448 pages
Published
March 1st 1999
by Simon Schuster
(first published January 5th 1998)
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Start your review of Imperfect Control: Our Lifelong Struggles With Power and Surrender
This book discusses our need for control over our lives, and various life events that challenge that control from early childhood through death. It provides a decent general discussion of the issue.
Near the outset, the author states that her intention is not to provide a 12-step program or discuss any specific emotional issue. This generality is both a strength and a weakness for the book. It is a strength because it helps to separate the book from the facile self-help books which seem to crowd ...more
Near the outset, the author states that her intention is not to provide a 12-step program or discuss any specific emotional issue. This generality is both a strength and a weakness for the book. It is a strength because it helps to separate the book from the facile self-help books which seem to crowd ...more
The book attempted to cover the entire waterfront and in doing so didn't provide a lot of depth or new insight for me.
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very insightful
This is a dense book, not summer beach reading. It's important material that can be difficult to absorb, but Viorst breaks it down so the reader can manage the concepts. Even so, this is a book that I read for a while and then set down so I could think about what I had read. Then a little later, I'd pick up the book to read a few pages or more, and then I'd put it down.
This is an adult version of her Alexander books for children. ...more
This is an adult version of her Alexander books for children. ...more
I read an earlier book by this author, Necessary Losses, which really helped me to deal with disappointment as I have gotten older and life has not always gone my way. In this book, Imperfect Control, she shows us how our sense of self and all our important relationships are colored by our struggles over control. I'm having to read it slowly with breaks, as it is a lot to digest, but it's fascinating to me because I love to read about human psychology, especially mine!
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Ik herinnerde me dit boek als zeer inzichtgevend, en wilde het daarom opnieuw lezen. Nu vond ik het een tamelijk dorre opsomming van alle manieren waarop we ons leven in de hand hebben (of denken / hopen / willen / proberen ...).
I'm rereading it before I give it away; certain key chapters deserve a going over once more.
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Mar 10, 2008
Candace Morris
marked it as to-read
started this a year ago, and really loved it. Voirst is rather meaty in this series of works, so it's a lot to digest. Alas, the seattle public library wanted it back and I never got to finish.
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well written, well researched, well balanced.
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Judith Viorst is the author of several works of fiction and non-fiction for children as well as adults. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, her most famous children's book, was first published in 1972 and has since sold over two million copies. Ms. Viorst received a B.A. in History from Rutgers University, and she is also a graduate of the Washington Psychoanalytic Institu
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