Was there ever a better book for the New Year than What You Can Change and What You Can't: The
Complete Guide to Successful Self-Improvement? Truly a book
forthe season when we reflect on the past twelve months and settle
on well-intentioned resolutions?
Are you determined to control your anger better? To lose that
extra midriff tyre or even to conquer your spider phobia? This
book, a review of the effectiveness of the treatments for major and
common psychological problems, ranging from anxiety to alcoholism,
will tell you what seems to work best, and what your chances of
success are.
Self improvement books
may give us false hope by celebrating short term results and
one-off, but unrepresentative, successes. Science reveals some
psychological challenges are much harder to overcome than others.
If you've failed in the past, as many of us have, you shouldn't
assume you're weak-willed. For some issues, evolution is against
you, and your biology is very much your destiny. For other
problems, psychiatry and psychology have yet to come up with an
effective solution to support you. Indeed, many pills and
psychotherapy interventions are intended to do no more than relieve
your symptoms. The establishment has, avers the author, "…all but
given up on a cure."
Three Best Things
There's a great deal to recommend this book but the three things
I enjoyed most were:
- The author's intellectual position in writing the book that his
"loyalty is to reasoned argument, to the unfashionable positions
that deserve a hearing, to the thoughtful weighing of evidence." If
there's a better way to get me to listen willingly and attentively,
I don't know what it might be!
- Seligman's rare and disarming knack of taking complex, erudite
topics and making them entirely approachable. Even the man's
footnotes are engrossing and engaging, for goodness' sake! Since
they occupy almost 15% of this 300 page book, I urge you to read
them. In my review of his book "Learned Optimism" you'll see I said much the
same there.
- The sense of perspective imparted by his recap of beliefs about
our capacity to effect change in ourselves. This recap ranges from
earliest times through to ongoing modern scientific debates, a vast
sweep into which the notions of destiny, free will, and nature
versus nurture all fit. Parts 2 and 3 of the book offer his
hardnosed, yet accessible, review of success rates for treating
various disorders, but they are sandwiched between parts 1 and 4.
There you will meet the message of the Seder, iconoclasts like
Francis Bacon and Krafft-Ebing, and the discoveries that made cases
for biological psychiatry on one hand and environmentalism on the
other. In a book about what you can change, with or without help,
this perspective really sets the scene.
The Author
What You Can Change and What You Can't: The
Complete Guide to Successful Self-Improvement is no pop psychology
work! Martin Seligman is a Professor of Psychology at the
University of Pennsylvania and a past president of the American
Psychological Association (APA). For decades he has studied aspects
of "plasticity" - what can be learned and changed - for the purpose
of bettering human life. Often referred to as the 'father of
Positive Psychology', Seligman's APA presidency marked the rebirth
of this area of research, which explores what makes us thrive and
flourish (in contrast to clinical psychology which focuses on how
to fix what's broken in us).
Topics Covered
In Part 2, Seligman reviews seven different sorts of emotional
challenge:
- Everyday anxiety
- Catastrophic thinking: panic
- Phobias
- Obsessions
- Depression
- Anger
- Post Traumatic Stress
In Part 3 he expands on other major preoccupations of modern
human life:
- Sex (identity, orientation, preference and role)
- Dieting
- Alcohol
Each of these sections follows a broadly similar format. The
author begins with a description of the problem or disorder,
particularly in terms of its prevalence. For problems with few
statistics, you may find a self survey instead. A statistically
representative case study may also appear. Next, he reviews
evidence for the various theories about what causes the problem. Is
alcoholism an outcome of an addictive personality, for example, or
is it a manifestation of a disease? Into this, he weaves a
description and assessment of the available treatments for which
there are outcome-based studies.
Finally, at the end of each separate review, he provides a
summary table of the major treatment types and assesses them for
improvement, relapse, side effects, costs, time scale to take
effect, before giving an overall effectiveness rating. At the end
of the book he also summarises what can be changed, and what can't,
into a rough array from "curable" (panic, for example) to
"unchangeable" (sexual identity).
Stuck at 65%
Across all the topics explored in parts 2 and 3, Seligman gives
a summary of how effective the relief of symptoms is. Relief is
measured both by the percent of symptoms for which patients
experience relief as well as by the percent of patients who
experience relief.
Whether by drugs or by psychotherapy, the relief rate is 65%.
The placebo effect ranges from 45 to 55%. That means that the
actual effect of the intervention can be as low as 10%. Further,
the total relief rate appears stuck at the 65% mark. Seligman
proposes reasons why this is so, not least the crucial discovery of
the last quarter of the 20th century that most personality traits
are highly heritable. This discovery implies that traits are
modifiable but only within limits.
Can we progress beyond 65% relief? Seligman can only suggest the
age-old advice of 'learning to deal with it', in other words to
function in the face of the disorder. Just as terror-stricken
trainee fighter pilots are taught to pull out of deadly nosedives
in the midst of their terror, so phobics, alcoholics and
depressives may be able to function at times, and within set
biological limits, to the best of their ability.
1993 vs 2007
What You Can Change and What You Can't: The
Complete Guide to Successful Self-Improvement was first published in
1993 and there is no mention of "revised and updated" for the 2007
Vintage edition I read. Is it therefore hopelessly out of date?
Have all the answers changed in the years since Seligman first
wrote it? Fear not. In the foreword to this later imprint the
author says,
As I survey the effectiveness of these treatments
for the major psychological disorders thirteen years later, I am
somewhat surprised to find that most of the results remain the
same, and the rest are not substantially different.
New Year's Resolution
I suspect, at this time of year, that many of you reading this
review are wondering what Professor Seligman has to say on dieting.
Gentle reader, the news is not good.
Why is weight loss one of the more intractable change targets?
Seligman suggests that it's a question of "depth". Changing what
lies deep within us - traits acquired in utero or over thousands of
years of evolution - are very hard to overcome. We are the products
of the uncertain environment of the Pleistocene, the descendants of
those who survived famine by storing fat, by dropping metabolism
even in the presence of renewed food sources and by avoiding
starvation by responding to intense food cravings. If we fail to
shed weight, it's not because we are weak-willed but because we
were designed over millenia to maintain weight at a set level.
This was perhaps the only part of the book I struggled with.
Reasoned argument and thoughtful weighing of evidence be damned! I
shall persist in my belief that my extra tyre will not only be gone
in a month or two but will stay away forever…
Realistic Hope
Seligman anticipated my reaction. In his final paragraphs he
acknowledges that it is hard to surrender some of our hopes. His
objective is not to destroy people's optimism about change but to
take that determination and desire for change, and point it at
goals we have a much better chance of reaching:
My purpose is to instill a new, warranted optimism
about the parts of your life you can change and so help you focus
your limited time, money and effort on making actual what is truly
within your reach.
The reviewed edition is published by Vintage and is available at
Amazon. Click the link to buy What You Can Change and What You Can't: The
Complete Guide to Successful Self-Improvement
© Professionelle Ltd 2009