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RAPID TRANSFORMATION THERAPY

Name: RAPID TRANSFORMATION THERAPY
Author: Marianne Rolland
ISBN: 978-1-5043-6745-5

by Marianne Rolland ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 14, 2016

May offer relief (sans scientific rigor) to sufferers of trauma.

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Rolland’s debut self-help guide offers PTSD and trauma sufferers a method of spirit-based healing with a focus on philosophy.

Rolland’s comprehensive emotional healing process is called Rapid Transformation Therapy and is a “spirit-driven therapeutic modality.” It integrates several healing approaches—energy-based therapies (such as shamanic healing); family-system/attachment-based therapies (for example, guided rebirthings); life span integration therapy (which facilitates the integration of soul fragments); and the wisdom Rolland’s elder teachers shared with her about healing the spirit. The RTT workshops are held in Anchorage, Alaska, at White Raven Center, which Rolland, a Ph.D. and social worker, runs with her husband, Floyd Guthrie, and staff. In the workshops, participants act out a recalled trauma in a group setting to “root out the pain trapped in their bodies,” whether that pain resulted from military experiences or “any number of life’s difficulties.” The authors says that she and her staff have witnessed “hundreds of people transform their lives” via RTT. Kent, for example, a veteran of the U.S. War in Afghanistan and the Iraq War, became “his true self” after RTT helped him clear “that emotional detritus away” from the “pent-up rage” of PTSD. Throughout this account, Rolland includes few sources, and no citations are provided. Rolland’s writing, however, is clear, and she’s often able to concisely outline complicated topics (“Many of us are ‘emotional reactors’ ”). Those seeking answers might find such statements validating. Those with a more intellectual bent may find them sweeping in their generalization. Even so, with clients saying such things post-RTT as, “I actually feel good about my life and about myself,” it appears that Rolland and team perform a much-needed service.

May offer relief (sans scientific rigor) to sufferers of trauma.

Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-5043-6745-5

Page Count: 264

Publisher: BalboaPress

Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2017

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

SELF-HELP

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THE LAWS OF HUMAN NATURE

by Robert Greene ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 23, 2018

The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.

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A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.

Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”

The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.

Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018

ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5

Page Count: 580

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018

Categories:

PSYCHOLOGY | SELF-HELP

- BOOK REVIEW
MASTERY
by Robert Greene

- BOOK REVIEW
THE 48 LAWS OF POWER
by Robert Greene

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MASTERY

by Robert Greene ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 13, 2012

Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...

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Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.

The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.

Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.