This is absolutely the best psychotherapy book I have ever read. It basically puts ownership and responsibility for a person's state of mind on the choices they make. I'm paraphrasing Glasser, but my interpretation is that we all need relationships to satisfy our basic needs, and when there is a problem in a relationship area we basically fall apart. It could be that you don't have any relationships and want them, you are scared of committing, you never had a secure relationship with a parent or you have harmful people in your life. Once you identify and acknowledge the relationship problem and figure out which needs aren't being met (survival, love and belonging, power, freedom, fun) you can begin to repair your mental health. Part of this is to also acknowledge that you make choices all day long that affect your level of functioning and happiness.

Glasser believes that most of the diagnoses in the psychiatric manual aren't truly mental illness. He also believes that people are over medicated. This is where his ideas are controversial. I personally agree with him but many people don't. He would argue that people don't have the willpower to put the effort in that is required to change. People want the easier and less expensive way which is medication. It's easier to treat something physiological than mental, so people and doctors convince them that their problem is out of their mental control. Glasser would argue that this keeps people on drugs that never fully work or have side effects at the expense of truly helping them change their thinking.

If you are motivated to change your thinking you should read this book. It is full of real accounts of people Glasser has worked with who had diagnoses such as OCD, schizophrenia and alcoholism. These are tough disorders to "cure," but he gives a play by play of actual therapy sessions which makes the therapeutic process easy to grasp. ( )

This book was pretty good. It is a collection of case stories that Glasser, he goes through basically a transcript of each case but stops at points to explain his thoughts and reasons.

There are certain aspects that I REALLY like about choice theory/reality therapy (the belief that we choose everything we do). THe issues that are arising for me stem from the part of choice theory that does not believe in mental illness (and Glasser even says this is the hardest thing for most people to accept). I can believe that doctors are too quick to give out drugs rather than use therapy for patients. Our society is a 'quick fix' one: if there is a problem we want it fixed now. But I have a really hard time believing that there is NO such thing as mental illness.

I have two more books on reality therapy--we'll see if those change my mind. ( )

This book was pretty good. It is a collection of case stories that Glasser, he goes through basically a transcript of each case but stops at points to explain his thoughts and reasons.

There are certain aspects that I REALLY like about choice theory/reality therapy (the belief that we choose everything we do). THe issues that are arising for me stem from the part of choice theory that does not believe in mental illness (and Glasser even says this is the hardest thing for most people to accept). I can believe that doctors are too quick to give out drugs rather than use therapy for patients. Our society is a 'quick fix' one: if there is a problem we want it fixed now. But I have a really hard time believing that there is NO such thing as mental illness.

I have two more books on reality therapy--we'll see if those change my mind. ( )