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Book – Trouver son propre chemin
Full title adds : Un guide pour redéfinir le sense de sa vie et réussir l'essentiel
Translation of the title : Finding one's own path, a guide to redefine one's Life's meaning and succeed in essentials
Author: Isabelle Filliozat
Score: 0/10
Year: 1992
Year: 1992
Publisher: Belfond
ISBN 9782266076302
Pages 282*
Language: French
I posted an original entry on Media Garden, my reviews blog. Today, I want to expand on it here, to showcase why I felt it contains dangerous topics, in contrast to the real terminologies. To avoid full copy paste, I'll let you read that review first, and then come back for quoted passages.
***
Very few of her exercises make total sense, namely two : mindful meditation and introspection to accept our flaws and learn from them in order to grow, but all the others are downright preposterous - such as the ones involving dreams and all those pseudoscience based pieces of advice and techniques given.
Meditation is a topic most of us have heard about ; it is quite often presented as part of a spiritual practice or component of religious routines. It has been popular among new age thinking, but has also become quite often pseudoscience. To understand, here's the wiki article about pseudoscience. However, science has also proved positive effects of meditation, for ex, Harvard's, and yet, research is lacking as shown on scientific american. Despite these limits, one can, in the meanwhile, practice mindful meditation, without religious, pseudoscientific, or new-age goals, and simply be aware of one's breathing, body, actions, and so forth, in the present moment - taking a few minutes every day, for oneself, as my therapist suggested - for ex, with apps Insight Timer, Petit Bambou or a few others, such as Sam Harris' Waking up - friends suggested Headspace, as well. I've discussed petit bamou in posts 412, and 413, and 419.
... in a passage about phobias, she over-simplifies both the developmental causes, and their treatment, as, indeed, according to her, only 3 sessions with a therapist would be enough...
Mind's website discusses, for instance, several possible causes in patients who developed phobias. To paraphrase and let you see further detail there : specific incidents or traumas, learned behavior, response to panic or fear, and long-term stress, possibly genetics. Here I can add something not said in that particular article but learned elsewhere, that in cases of trauma where an untreated initial anxiety/panic responses were specific towards the original type of event, in fear of its recurrence, may further develop into additional specific phobias, the topic of an article of psychology today.
All these causes are far more complicated and complex than that! as already stated in my review.
Mind's article hyperlinks to another article, about treatments for phobias : cbt, exposure therapy, hypnotherapy, and at least 3 types of medications, namely, antidepressants, tranquillisers, and beta-blockers. I have only tried cbt with exposure component, first worked, during 25 sessions, on my social phobias, until I became more autonomous, and have had another 32 sessions, thus far, working on 2 other phobias, emeto and hemophobia, or blood phobias, as part of my emeto-complex (emetophobia, blood phobia, coprophobia, carnophobia) - I discussed these 4 intertwined phobias on post 280. You can see for yourself that 3 sessions aren't AT ALL enough to 'get over phobias' and that some may need many more...
***
Some of the problems exposed are too simplistic and don't take into account abusive and toxic persons whom we shouldn't accept on the sole merit of our own expectations and introspection, simply because there are people like that, who abuse others' kindness, and the author's comments are, at times, victim-blaming.
An article about types of toxic relationships, as counterpoint to all those simplistic ways the author basically blames victims of abuse and of having let toxic people in.
***
The author has an ...exercise in 'dissociation' as if it were a positive psychological technique- here, she suggests dissociating (using the term), and detaching oneself to look upon oneself externally in order to evaluate and learn...
Further info about dissociation on Mind's website , again, to showcase that though many people experience short periods of dissociation, and some may develop dissociative disorder, it isn't a technique to decide to dissociate in order to learn about oneself, but an automatic coping mechanism.
***
She also gives some weird advice on putting oneself in the mindset of a person we know to embody qualities, or who have specific skills we lack in, in order to learn them, simply by the fact that we admire them and that by imagining ourselves in their place, we would feel the same emotions and learn their techniques, via the "skills bank'' each of us deposits into as part of the human "collective unconscious" which she refers to also as "human reservoir of knowledge" and "morphogenetic field"...
These and other tips in 'programming oneself to grow and learn' in various pseudoscientific ways, very similar to the so-called 'law of attraction', veer so far off the path of science and psychology,
Science regards morphogenetic field as pseudoscience, as in, not based on scientific evidence and has been only hypothetical. The author describes it as a known fact and truth, where it isn't. She uses it as a basis and conclusion to her various exercises in which we can willingly dissociate ourselves from ourselves, to learn about our qualities and flaws, and to develop skills we never had before, simply by experiencing the same emotions, thus learning the same skills, as those we focus our dissociative minds unto have already learned and had deposited their vast knowledge in that morphogenetic field, which she assimilates also as the human reservoir of knowledge and skills banks, any one of us can access.... Need I really go on about how absurd this is??
***
I fear this book isn't to be read by anyone who doesn't know better....because the reader must exercise extreme caution, filtering out a LOT from the book's content.
As I posted on my social media, I gave this book away, to be burnt. This is how dangerous I feel the book could be to others, that I prefer getting totally rid of it.
I posted an original entry on Media Garden, my reviews blog. Today, I want to expand on it here, to showcase why I felt it contains dangerous topics, in contrast to the real terminologies. To avoid full copy paste, I'll let you read that review first, and then come back for quoted passages.
***
Very few of her exercises make total sense, namely two : mindful meditation and introspection to accept our flaws and learn from them in order to grow, but all the others are downright preposterous - such as the ones involving dreams and all those pseudoscience based pieces of advice and techniques given.
Meditation is a topic most of us have heard about ; it is quite often presented as part of a spiritual practice or component of religious routines. It has been popular among new age thinking, but has also become quite often pseudoscience. To understand, here's the wiki article about pseudoscience. However, science has also proved positive effects of meditation, for ex, Harvard's, and yet, research is lacking as shown on scientific american. Despite these limits, one can, in the meanwhile, practice mindful meditation, without religious, pseudoscientific, or new-age goals, and simply be aware of one's breathing, body, actions, and so forth, in the present moment - taking a few minutes every day, for oneself, as my therapist suggested - for ex, with apps Insight Timer, Petit Bambou or a few others, such as Sam Harris' Waking up - friends suggested Headspace, as well. I've discussed petit bamou in posts 412, and 413, and 419.
***
... in a passage about phobias, she over-simplifies both the developmental causes, and their treatment, as, indeed, according to her, only 3 sessions with a therapist would be enough...
Mind's website discusses, for instance, several possible causes in patients who developed phobias. To paraphrase and let you see further detail there : specific incidents or traumas, learned behavior, response to panic or fear, and long-term stress, possibly genetics. Here I can add something not said in that particular article but learned elsewhere, that in cases of trauma where an untreated initial anxiety/panic responses were specific towards the original type of event, in fear of its recurrence, may further develop into additional specific phobias, the topic of an article of psychology today.
All these causes are far more complicated and complex than that! as already stated in my review.
Mind's article hyperlinks to another article, about treatments for phobias : cbt, exposure therapy, hypnotherapy, and at least 3 types of medications, namely, antidepressants, tranquillisers, and beta-blockers. I have only tried cbt with exposure component, first worked, during 25 sessions, on my social phobias, until I became more autonomous, and have had another 32 sessions, thus far, working on 2 other phobias, emeto and hemophobia, or blood phobias, as part of my emeto-complex (emetophobia, blood phobia, coprophobia, carnophobia) - I discussed these 4 intertwined phobias on post 280. You can see for yourself that 3 sessions aren't AT ALL enough to 'get over phobias' and that some may need many more...
It's really too bad she oversimplified and misinformed her readers!
***
Some of the problems exposed are too simplistic and don't take into account abusive and toxic persons whom we shouldn't accept on the sole merit of our own expectations and introspection, simply because there are people like that, who abuse others' kindness, and the author's comments are, at times, victim-blaming.
An article about types of toxic relationships, as counterpoint to all those simplistic ways the author basically blames victims of abuse and of having let toxic people in.
***
The author has an ...exercise in 'dissociation' as if it were a positive psychological technique- here, she suggests dissociating (using the term), and detaching oneself to look upon oneself externally in order to evaluate and learn...
Further info about dissociation on Mind's website , again, to showcase that though many people experience short periods of dissociation, and some may develop dissociative disorder, it isn't a technique to decide to dissociate in order to learn about oneself, but an automatic coping mechanism.
***
She also gives some weird advice on putting oneself in the mindset of a person we know to embody qualities, or who have specific skills we lack in, in order to learn them, simply by the fact that we admire them and that by imagining ourselves in their place, we would feel the same emotions and learn their techniques, via the "skills bank'' each of us deposits into as part of the human "collective unconscious" which she refers to also as "human reservoir of knowledge" and "morphogenetic field"...
These and other tips in 'programming oneself to grow and learn' in various pseudoscientific ways, very similar to the so-called 'law of attraction', veer so far off the path of science and psychology,
Science regards morphogenetic field as pseudoscience, as in, not based on scientific evidence and has been only hypothetical. The author describes it as a known fact and truth, where it isn't. She uses it as a basis and conclusion to her various exercises in which we can willingly dissociate ourselves from ourselves, to learn about our qualities and flaws, and to develop skills we never had before, simply by experiencing the same emotions, thus learning the same skills, as those we focus our dissociative minds unto have already learned and had deposited their vast knowledge in that morphogenetic field, which she assimilates also as the human reservoir of knowledge and skills banks, any one of us can access.... Need I really go on about how absurd this is??
***
I fear this book isn't to be read by anyone who doesn't know better....because the reader must exercise extreme caution, filtering out a LOT from the book's content.
As I posted on my social media, I gave this book away, to be burnt. This is how dangerous I feel the book could be to others, that I prefer getting totally rid of it.
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