TO: Dr. Joe Scarcella
FROM: Phil Fournier
DATE: 1/8/2005
RE: 502/503, Choice Theory book
report, Fournier
William Glasser, MD, is the founder and leader of the William Glasser Institute in
1.
The
2.
Warning:
Psychiatry Can Be Hazardous to Your Mental Health
3.
Control
Theory: A New Explanation of How We Control Our Lives
4.
Counseling
with Choice Theory, Getting Together and Staying Together: Solving the Mystery
of Marriage
5.
Reality
Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry
6.
For
Parents and Teenagers : Dissolving the Barrier Between You and Your Teen
7.
Stations
of the Mind: New Directions for Reality Therapy
8.
The
9.
Staying
Together: The Control Theory Guide to a Lasting Marriage
10. Schools Without Failure
11. The Language of Choice Theory
12. Unhappy Teenagers:
13. The Control Theory
Manager
14. Positive Addiction
15. Identity Society
16. Fibromyalgia: Hope from a
Completely New Perspective
17. Every
Student Can Succeed
18. What
Is This Thing Called Love?
19. Take
Effective Control of Your Life
20. Reclaiming
Literature
21. Mental
Health or Mental Illness
22. Control
Theory in the Practice of Reality Therapy: Case Studies
23. The
effect of school failure on the life of a child
(I have to
believe there is a great deal of duplication in the content of these books. There are more of these books listed but the
titles are so similar I’m not sure they are a different book.)
This book was a
refreshing change from the Dan Millman book. It was radically different from almost
everything I have heard before, but it made a lot of sense on an intuitive
level. Dr. Glasser’s
premise is (put in my own words) that most of the misery in life comes from
failed relationships; that getting along with others is our problem, and
without training, our solution to the problem is trying to control other
people. But we cannot control other
people really; all we can do is control ourselves. In trying to control other people, depending
upon how resistant they are to being controlled (their own “need strengths”) we
end up making either ourselves or the other person miserable.
Quote from the
story of Tina “It’s up to me, isn’t it?”
“It always is. That’s choice
theory – it’s up to you.” Pg. 171
I found the title
of the book to be a continual stumbling block to my understanding and I wish
the author had chosen something different than the word “theory” though the
word “choice” certainly fits very well.
But setting that aside, Dr. Glasser does an
excellent job of making his case that what he calls “external control
psychology” is a damaging influence and needs to be replaced with his “choice
theory”. There was much of the book that
was difficult for me, having never had a class in psychology and knowing very
little about the science of the mind.
But perhaps this was a net-positive, because I sense that what the
author says would greatly offend many psychiatrists. I insert here the illustration he used
regarding the prescribing of the drug Prozac to treat depression or what he
calls “depressing.” He looks at the
chemical imbalance problem to be a symptom, not a cause of depression. He illustrates this by using the analogy of a
runner who comes back from a run sweating.
Someone might ask them “why are you sweating?” to which they would
respond “because I have been running.”
No one would think of telling them they were running because of the
sweat. Dr. Glasser
puts depression on the same level as running by making it a verb “you are
depressing” just like the verb we understand better “you are running.” In like manner, he says that as sweat is the
body’s response to physical activity, so chemical imbalance in the brain is a
result of depressing, a mental activity according to him. I don’t know, but I’d be willing to bet there
are plenty of psychologists who would go nuts if this were suggested to them as
a possibility.
“Choice theory does
not deny that people have complaints, but it teaches that the only persons we
can control are ourselves. We cannot
control anyone else, including our counselors, with these complaints.”
Though the above
statement was pretty clear after I was well into the book, I wish the doctor
had started with illustrations earlier in the book because I felt pretty lost
for the first 50 pages. Then he gave the
illustration of Todd, the middle aged man who lost his young wife by being a
control freak (domineering) and she finally got fed up. That illustration would have been helpful at
the beginning of the book, I think. But
from there on things were easier to understand, particularly the “illustration”
of Francesca from The Bridges of Madison County. Or, was the book and film based on the story
from this book? I don’t know and I went
through the introduction to the story multiple times trying to figure out if he
just used that story to illustrate his point or if it was a true story. Based on the date of publishing in this book,
I would assume that Dr. Glasser adapted the book to
work for his illustration purposes. In
either case, it was a useful illustration of the mechanisms that one uses to
cope with an unhappy life and how a therapist might redirect a person’s
thoughts to something he or she can control.
“I don’t believe it
does any good to revisit the past in the hope of finding something there that
corresponds to the present problem. I
disagree with the psychiatric thinking that you can learn from past
misery. When you focus on the past, all
you are doing is revisiting the misery.
One trip through the misery is more than enough for most people.”
I really
appreciated the above point and the doctor’s subsequent thoughts on creativity
and supposed suppressed memories. I have
always been skeptical (from a distance having had no real experience with it
myself) of those who claimed to have remembered forgotten abuses with the help
of a therapist. Additionally, I liked
his premise that agonizing over a past which is gone and done with and cannot
be changed is hardly a useful exercise.
I have had my own share of sorrows in life and dwelling on them, while a
tempting exercise, is not a useful one as far as dealing with the present and
future. As the doctor points out, we can
only make choices about how we behave and react NOW, not change the past or try
to leverage the actions of others.
“It is also crucial
to teach clients that life is not fair, that in the real world some people give
more to a relationship than others.”
I have two adopted
children, one of which experienced a great deal of unfairness in his life before
he came to live with my wife and I, and probably experienced some unfairness
afterwards as we tried to do our best balancing the needs of two adopted
children and one naturally born child.
Getting hold of the nature of life’s unfairness helps one stop pining
over that fact and simply accept the truth of it. We have to live the life God has given us,
not wish we were someone else or in someone else’s position.
“It has been my
experience that helping people to look at a physiological problem as a choice
is a liberating awareness. The mystery,
the fear that something beyond their control has suddenly come over them, is
removed.” Pg. 159.
I certainly wonder
how many psychiatrists would agree or appreciate that statement. I have the feeling that many of them like
having people dependent on them for help.
It may be that I am overly negative towards the profession due to the
huge debt one of my family members ran up while trying to get help for a child
in the family who showed some signs of psychosis. At the same time, the doctor seems to go
pretty far in the direction of suggesting that nearly all mental illness is caused by a choice to “depress”, “psychos”, “nervose” and the other verbs he applies to the theory. By the end of the book I had the distinct
feeling that the doctor had fallen a bit too in love with his theory. I would not be comfortable myself doing as he
suggests with a three year old. That is,
let them choose what they eat, what time they go to bed, and so forth. He attributes a pretty high level of
reasoning skills to very small children.
Additionally, I wonder about his broad application of the theory to
schools. I have no doubt that he is
correct about many things; that school boards, administrators, and teachers
have gotten stuck in “external control psychology” grooves that don’t work with
many students. Yet he gives no credit at
all to the thought that some students not only do well, but excel in present
day schools. Nevertheless, his
achievements in the
However, I am
wondering about how far the choice theory idea can be carried as to a universal
application. I think it interesting that
many young people, my own son included, have thrived in the ROTC programs. These programs are based on the military
application of external control, an external control that surpasses all others
as far as I can tell. According to Dr. Glasser’s theory, these programs should be a complete
failure. Yet I have seen how they not
only work very well (with some, not all children) in their own area, they
succeed at motivating the students to do better in their other areas of
work. I suppose that Dr. Glasser would say that is because the instructor’s succeed
in putting themselves into the quality worlds of the students by showing
caring, and perhaps that is true. He
does not address the issue in the book, but I wish he had done so.
I appreciated Dr. Glasser’s take on the superiority of leadership to bossing
in the workplace. As an employer and a
supervisor myself, I am keenly aware of how much better my employees respond to
leadership as opposed to bossing. It
probably helps that I have never been very comfortable with bossing
anyway. I am a self-motivated individual
and am happy to surround myself with similarly motivated individuals. This
book was a vindication of what I have felt instinctively to be true; that
employees must be motivated by example and by a leadership attitude that
rewards initiative and appreciates the employees for what they bring to the
company and what they are in themselves, apart from any gain the company might
realize from them. I have tried to weave
these ideas into the fabric of my company and I think I have been fairly
successful in so doing. My low employee
turnover rate I think speaks highly to this fact.
All in all, I
believe this was a useful book, far more so than the Millman
book. I would be interested in reading
Dr. Glasser’s other works. Though I don’t agree with everything he says,
and I think he is somewhat narrowly focused on what he perceives to be the
answer to most of the world’s problems, I think he is on to something that we
would all do well to pay more attention to.