Search for the Real Self [Hardcover]

Taken literally, this book has three major flaws: (1) Its notion of the "real" self is based on antiquated notions, altogether innocent of any awareness that everyone has many "selves," and that set of selves is always in large part constructed by history and culture. Further, "selves" are in part functions of social situations, not internal organization. The idea of a unified "real" self makes no intellectual sense, relative to research of the last half century. (2) The old-fashioned psychoanalytic theory grounding this book has little or nothing to commend it, so far as real research goes. While Freud, Winnicott, Mahler, etc., were geniuses, and as probably right about as often as wrong, we don't really know which parts of psychoanalysis are and which nonsense. But we do know, beyond peradventure, that research has refuted or failed to confirm most psychoanalytic developmental theories. (3) Everyone outside of New York and a few other very conservative medical communities has recognized that Masterson's type of therapy just doesn't work. He is brilliant at delineating ways of thinking about personality disorders, but unoriginal and unhelpful therapeutically.

All that being said, this book can still be extremely helpful. Ideas do not have to be true to "work." The way to appreciate this book is to think of it as a complex system of metaphors-not literally true, but useful tools for looking at a perplexing set of phenomena.

Careful observation can lead to useful ways of thinking, even if the terms in which those observations are couched are just not adequate for an accurate science. The terms used for the observations give us useful tools to hold onto what we've observed until we really understand it. The Ptolemaic astronomers, for instace, or the pre-evolutionary nineteenth century taxonomists illustrate this oft-repeated fact of intellectual history.

Without such observations, and such ultimately inadequate terms, we would never know enough to get to, eventually, correct understanding. We always have to start somewhere, and collecting data with whatever terms we can come up with is the place we have to start. Again, the preevolutionary naturalists--a huge number of whom were Christian ministers--held beliefs about the nature of species and the organization of nature that are quite false. By pursuing their observations in support of these false theories, they collected the data that allowed better understanding to emerge.

Instead of "real self," think, for instance, "habits of living that encompass one's biological make up and social milieu." The issue isn't that the BPD has a "false" self, or that some "real self" lies underneath. Poor design, not falsity, is the problem. The BPD's habits of living fail to encompass and give form to what's integral to his or her biology, temperament, or talents, within the environmnt in which he or she lives.

Any number of "selves" are possible, given a person's actual make-up, and they may bear litle resemblance to each other. For the BPD, new habits of living must be developed; a new set of selves must be cultivated--but actively, not by uncovering something already there.

And don't think of the stuff about early family life as literally, causally true. No research supports that contention; quite the contrary. Seven decades of serious research have failed to uncover correlations between early childhood and adult life.

But Masterson has correctly observed SOMETHING, even if hs causal account is wrong. Think of this stuff as a set of metaphors for how the BPD experiences relationships now, in the present. However those ways of organizing one's experience got started, this set of metaphors gives you a way of glimpsing the very strange, agonizing world that the BPD occupies.

In my experience, BPDs can improve more drastically and quickly than Masterson knows-but not using his therapy methods. Trapped in the authority-ridden, conservative milieu of New York psychoanalysis, Masterson would never have had the freedom-if he ever even had the inclination-to think about non-analytic ways of treating BPD.

This is a helpful book, but not to be taken literally. It provides a set of metaphors that can shed some light, if you'll let them. Read it, but also read Santoro and Cohen's "The Angry Heart," which is a much better, more current, more effective guide to getting over BPD.

The book targets underachievers and overachievers, those unable to form stable relationships for reasons not apparent to them, and people reacting to underlying fears of abandonment or engulfment. Author James Masterson traces the narrow, frustrated lives of these people to their childhood years and picks apart the reason for their apparent inability to grow up emotionally or feel like adults in a world where it seems everyone else does just fine.

Masterson carries the reader through the formation, experience and playing out of various defensive strategies people use to avoid what he calls their real selves, but his therapy seems to take years and fortunes, and it's unclear how much benefit patients actually get from the therapy. He acknowledges the power of creativity to free an individual but relegates the impact of religion and spirituality to pathology.

It's not a bad book, but the author's style lapses into over-analytical language that will put off a non-professional reader and perhaps not impressing a professional who may find the book too simplistic overall. It also will not appeal to those at odds with Freud's theories.

Worsening matters is that the detached and cool therapeutic approach necessary for Masterson's practice carries over to his writing style, making the doctor appear unfeeling and bloodless.

It's not that there's anything particularly wrong with the book, but it leaves an empty feeling in the reader and makes one wonder if analyzing various personality types really leads to changed behavior, or whether the hard work of reevaluating one's life is aided by such analysis.