cover image Why Do I Keep Doing That? Why Do I Keep Doing That?: Breaking the Negative Patterns in Your Life

Why Do I Keep Doing That? Why Do I Keep Doing That?: Breaking the Negative Patterns in Your Life

Dennis Wholey, . . Health Communications, $21.95 (214pp) ISBN 978-0-7573-0582-5

Frustrated by his own self-defeating behavior and inspired by Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle , talk show host Wholey (PBS's This Is America ) explains repetition compulsion—a tendency to repeat behavior that has already proved unhealthy—using interviews with mental health experts and the testimony of ordinary people who have conquered their problems. Dealing with pitfalls such as people pleasing, procrastination and rage, these regular people explain their specific problems, theorize about what drives their "compulsion to repeat" and offer their commonsense suggestions for change. The experts—including Peter Kramer (Listening to Prozac ), Nathaniel Branden (Six Pillars of Self-Esteem ), Harvard clinical psychiatry professor E. Virginia Demos and others—reinforce Freud's belief that such behavior is rooted in childhood experience. Wholey (The Miracle of Change ) himself sticks to pep talks and questionnaires designed to illuminate the reader's problems. This encouraging guide offers the fundamental advice that one should seek professional help. Though readers stuck in negative patterns may recognize themselves in Wholey's case studies, those who have already graced a therapist's couch won't find any new insight here. (Mar.)