Transforming Your Self: Becoming Who You Want to Be
Author: Steve Andreas
List Price: $16.50
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ISBN: 0911226435
Publisher: Real People Pr (November, 2002)
Sales Rank: 39,239
Average Customer Rating: 3.83 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 5 out of 5
Andreas helps readers transform identity
The first time I encountered the writing of Steve Andreas was when I read his superb book "Awareness" written under the name John O. Stevens. That was over twenty-five years ago. Since then, Andreas, in his writing and teaching, helped to found NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) and to guide NLP towards sensitive morality and technical effectiveness. The subject of this book--transforming your self--is a tricky one. Any book on this subject must guide readers to change their self with--guess what?--their self doing the guiding. This is a complex, paradoxical endeavor, one Andreas deals with well throughout the book through the use of many specific examples. What makes this book and its subject especially important is this: our sense of self influences many aspects of the rest of our lives: our values, our feelings, our relationships, our decisions, our hopes and dreams, and certainly our behaviors. Andreas treats this important subject much like he treats his workshop participants--with care, sensitive guidance and technical skill. He accomplishes this without falling into a review of often confusing and contradictory philosophical theories. Instead, he goes beyond theories to practice. He focuses on what we *can actually do,* to transform our sense of self in the privacy of our own minds. The process Andreas reveals in this book not only helps us to enhance our sense of self, but also offers something else: the book's workshop-style format helps therapists, educators and other professionals to discover how to pass on what they've learned to their clients and students. Parents too can benefit in this way, passing on what they learn to their children. For all of these reasons, I highly recommend Steve Andreas's book, Transforming Your Self: Becoming Who You Want to Be. Kelly Patrick Gerling, Ph.D.
Rating: 1 out of 5
Shabbily Written Disappointment
In his introduction, the author describes a conference, in which he is the only participant who actually knows how to change the self-concept, and promises a systematic methodology -- an exciting prospect. He also mentions that the book uses the "Workshop Training Format", which amounts to taking the transcripts of group workshops and editing them to simulate (and avoid) an actual writing effort. The result is a promise unfulfilled, and a reader frustrated.The workshops are apparently given to NLP groupies, who evidently spend their learning sessions watching movies dance in their heads, and hearing voices coming from their nose. The ordinary mortal is faced with a barrage of esoteric jargon, such as "future-pacing", the "Swish" method (undefined), "running a movie ... until it's what they want", and "putting that experience in the future".
The author is clearly NOT addressing the reader, but is talking to a group of agreeing and nodding therapists who already are conversant in his bafflegab. Even if one grants the faith that his methods might work, the methods are so unintelligibly presented, that they are useless.
What a shame! The author is (he says) the only one who knows how to transform the self, and he can't take the trouble to write it down coherently.
Save your money.
Rating: 1 out of 5
Something borrowed
I'm gonna have to stand with the previous reviewer who, quite rightly, points out that there is nothing significantly new in this book.
Indeed, the fact that many NLPers think this is some kind of breakthrough simply illustrates how little NLP takes account of what is going on in the rest of the world.One reviewer says: "What is certain to surprise many motivational speakers and self improvement authors is that not thinking of mistakes or failures actually weakens a person's sense of self, making it rigid, brittle, and perfectionist."
Yes. And the point is?
In fact Professor Albert Bandura has been pointing this out for the best part of three decades (nearly 30 years!) in his work on what he calls "self efficacy". Not exactly "new" or "breakthrough" in 2001!
In the relatively early days of NLP Steve Andreas and his wife, Connirae, did NLP's co-developers Bandler and Grinder a tremendous service by editing their seminars to produce books like "Frogs into Princes" and "TRANCE Formations". But being a great editor isn't the same thing at all as being a great writer or a great teacher - as this book shows all too clearly.
This book is actually a weak and derivative entry in the NLP genre. If NLP wants to survive much longer as a distinct entity it needs to be generating material a whole lot better than this, such as Joseph Riggio's work on the "mythoself".
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