Taming Your Gremlin: A Surprisingly Simple Method for Getting Out of Your Own Way Author: Rick Carson | Language: English | ISBN:
0060520221 | Format: EPUB
Taming Your Gremlin: A Surprisingly Simple Method for Getting Out of Your Own Way Description
Review
“Rick Carson is a genius at exploring our inner conflicts in novel ways. ...And there’s a bonus: it works.” (Larry Dossey, M.D., author of Reinventing Medicine and Healing Words)
“I loved Taming Your Gremlin(R). . . .this book led me to a very profound awareness.” (Virginia M. Satir, author of Peoplemaking, about the first edition)
“I have found ‘Gremlin-Taming’ to be a unique, imaginative, and effective tool. . .I highly recommend it!” (Joan Baez)
About the Author
This is Rick Carson's fourth book for HarperCollins. His seminal work, Taming Your Gremlin®, has had a remarkable track record. Translated into several languages, Taming Your Gremlin has been a consistent seller since 1984. For thousands in a cross-section of cultures and circumstances, the Gremlin-Taming Method serves as a foundation for responding to everyday challenges and for living a satisfying life.
For over thirty-five years Rick has been a counselor, personal and executive coach, and trainer for mental health professionals, businesses, and nonprofit organizations. His work is used in the training of psychotherapists, personal and executive coaches, substance abuse specialists, corrections personnel, teachers, corporate executives, clergy, and others. He is a former faculty member at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School and a clinical member and approved supervisor for the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy.
Rick is the founder of the Gremlin Taming Institute in Dallas, Texas.
- Paperback: 192 pages
- Publisher: Quill; Revised edition (July 8, 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0060520221
- ISBN-13: 978-0060520229
- Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.8 x 0.4 inches
- Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
I heard Rick Carson on NPR some time ago and was impressed with that he had to say. I had never heard of his book until then and I immediately wrote down the title so that I could buy it at a later date.
Now that I've read the book I'm trying to figure out why what I heard him say is so different than what I'm reading.
My problem with this book started right at the beginning with his "trademarked" Gremlin-Training Method (all caps, just as he does in the book). This seemed contrived to me, absolutely false. It was like reading a book talk about the author's patented passive solar windows as their own trademarked "Sun Energy Capture Device." In other words, like an infomercial. This intial reaction was confirmed as I continued to read. The tactics and topics Carson raises are extremely simplistic. Practical perhaps, but hardly worthy of a "trademark."
The other problem I had with the book is that Carson uses his metaphor to excess. This is a danger he should have been aware of. A Gremlin is a workable metaphor for most people as long as you make it abstract. That is, that voice in your head which puts you down. As soon as you start describing its supposed physical nature (the minister, the coach, the monster, etc.) the metaphor starts losing its audience. Not everyone wants or needs to describe that nasty voice in such terms.
I wished Carson had backed off the metaphor somewhat, backed off from from the hard sell on his "trademarked" method, and just gave an in-depth analysis of people's internal negative voices, where they come from, how to control them, etc. I don't want to read something that makes me feel like I'm buying a used car or the next TV control clapper.
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