I thought this would be like The Law of Superheroes, but it’s actually pretty boring. There’s less about “what makes Superhero X tick” and more about generic psychological phenomena. For example, they don’t talk about the Hulk’s relationship to rage or how to treat him. They talk about rage in general, using Hulk for their case studies and examples. It’s like they took their research and replaced real names with superheroes.

They’re always talking about “positive psychology” and I don’t know what that is. At least they avoid any discussion of Freud, except in a satirical “what not to do” sense. Unless you know psychology, you won’t have a fun time with this. But if you were a doctor of psychology, you also wouldn’t learn anything new from this book. Like any collection of short stories or essays by multiple authors, the essays are going to be hit or miss. ( )

An interesting set of essays using comic book superheroes to make some points about more general huamn behaviors and attitudes. Fun, and at times thought-provoking. ( )