A New Look at Two Old Books

I am sitting in my library that is but a fraction of what it used to be; it is still floor to ceiling & wall to wall. Over the years it has been moved a box at a time from New Jersey to Boston to Palm Springs to Arizona to Torrance to Boston back to Torrance & now to San Pedro. It made two really worthwhile stops when it became the Pacific Coast Counseling Center Library as a requirement to become, in the ‘70s, an extension site for Chapman College (now a University) and when 5,000 books became the collection that made up Curentur University Library (now American University for Complementary Medicine) for their site approval.

Two books in the library seem to stand out this morning as I look at the collection. Shifting Gears (ISBN 0-87131-145-3) by Nena & George O’Neill was written in 1974 & I have lectured on the book’s contents over the years.  The second book is by Dr. Chris Thurman, a Psychologist at Minirth-Meir Clinic in Richardson, Texas is The Lies We Believe (ISBN 0-8407-3498-0)& is a gem in terms of looking at our “self-lies” &” worldly lies” & “marital lies” other lies that mess with our thinking. Dr. Thurman published this book in 1989.

In Dr. Thurman’s Appendix B, he quotes a few folks including:(1) Alfred Adler:”It is very obvious that we are influenced not by ‘facts’ but by our interpretation of facts.” (2) John Milton: “The mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a heaven of Hell, a hell of Heaven.” (3) William Shakespeare: “There is nothing either good nor bad but thinking makes it so.” and (4) Immanuel Kant: “The only feature common to all mental disorders is the loss of common sense and the compensatory development of a unique private sense of reasoning.”

In the O’Neill’ book, they speak to one’s assumptive state: “The Main point we want to make clear is that to question your (one’s) assumptive state at various points in the course of your (one’s) life  is perfectly normal and indeed vital to your continuing growth as a person.” They also said: “Contemporary society tends to deprive us of the quiet moments we need between the periods of excitement.”

Lies like: “I must have everyone’s love & approval,” or “My unhappiness is somebody else’s fault,” or “Life should be fair,” just scratch the surface of what Dr. Thurman discusses. The book is going on fourteen years old and very much still worth searching for and reading!

“Shifting gears is the process by which we choose change; our life strategy is the open-minded attitude that allows  us to make that change,” the O’Neill book tell us. They have a wonderful

“building analogy” I will share with you.

“In crisis, it may seem to you that your life structure is a rambling hodgepodge of disconnected, unrelated, narrow window-less rooms–the building blocks and beams may seem cockeyed, jerry-built and hardly worth saving.  But you can salvage the materials and start all over again with a new design.  Now, using the materials you already have in a new way, you can construct the kind of building, the kind of life, that meets your needs, your hopes and your dreams.  The building blocks of the past are not wasted; they are the raw materials out of which you build the future.  But if you stand around bewailing the shape of the old structure instead of getting about the business of rebuilding it, you can waste the future.  Rebuilding requires effort and courage - knocking apart the old structures to get at the usable raw materials is uncomfortable, even painful, but when the ground is leveled and the view beyond is clear, the excitement of building anew takes over.”

As you can tell by now, I think these two old books like a  63 year old can still have much to offer. Try to find these gems! 

On a commercial note: People often say to me that they cannot try Chinese Medicine ‘cause they don’t like (by implication) to try new things or the needles may hurt or their MD might not approve. Really now!    Dr. Al

Two other books with similar themes: Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda. by Drs. Freeman & DeWolf published in 1989 (ISBN 0-688-08508-3) and Crazy Talk, Stupid Talk. by Neil Postman published in 1976 (ISBN 0-440-01554-5)