Shyness: What It Is, What to Do About It
Author: Philip G. Zimbardo
List Price: $16.00
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ISBN: 0201550180
Publisher: Perseus Publishing (March, 1990)
Sales Rank: 30,647
Average Customer Rating: 3.67 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 4 out of 5
Outdated but still the best
Being a true-blue shy person, I've ordered every book on shyness I could find. This author seems to be the only one who really knows what he's talking about. The reason I give it 4 stars instead of 5 is that it's outdated. The only thing that has changed since I bought this book 10 years ago is it's cover.
Rating: 2 out of 5
not that good
The book is *outdated*. It was written in 1979. Some of its theories really freaked me out. I thought there was some thing seriously wrong with me. And it's not that informative. The impression I got from the writer is shyness is not normal and it's some kind of a character defect that needs to be treated. I read a part about shy people tend to become perverts, rapists or killers. That's not true. If you want a great book about shyness, then you should buy "Shyness: A bold new approach" By Bernardo J. Carducci, Ph.D. His book is recent and the information provided is totally up todate. He doesn't think shyness is a character defect that needs to be treated, etc.
Rating: 1 out of 5
Ick.
This book was recommended to me by my manager because I am a quiet person, and very choosy about the people I associate with. While I am a bit shy, it doesn't interfere with my personal or professional life as much as this book implicated that it should.This book covered mostly pathologically shy people, and painfully shy people. The end of the first half of the book pointed out that shy people have greater tendencies to become murderers, rapist, see prostitutes, etc. It freaked me out so badly that I put the book down.
I picked it up, read through the second half, and surprise, surprise, it was a bunch of self-exploratory psychobabble exercises. While this might have been fine for someone who has not thought about who they are, where they came from, and what they're doing now, I found the exercises useless, as I know very well who I am.
I knew beforehand the particular reasons that I don't like to be around people, so this book wasn't much help. It was interesting to read the interviews with nearly terminally shy people, but other than that... there was almost no reason for me to read this book. It brought me little enjoyment, and even less revelation.
I'm sure there are people who haven't looked at their lives, and their surroundings, and their thoughts about themselves and others. Perhaps to them, this may be a wake-up call.
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