I'll advise all the people who are in an unhealthy relationship to buy this book.This book will open your eyes and break that pattern of obsessive behavior.

This book helped me break the Infatuation Cycles I had developed. It is written in a very concise and non-invasive way so as not to offend and make you feel...well...like a deranged and sick person. My behavior was deranged and sick, but after reading this book I made a determined and solid decision to move on AND not look back. I have not repeated my Obsessive Cycle since.

When I first got this book, I was so addicted to a person that I did not realize I was stalking him and invading his privacy. This book deals out some harsh truth in the beginning. At first I felt no sympathy for my painful ordeal and I couldn't read it. I would recommend reading this book after you have explored why you are the way you are and accepted that are obsessed or addicted to a person. Before reading this book, you might want to try How to Break an Addiction to a Person. That book is a little more sympathetic to how you feel and it helps you to understand why you are acting the way you act. Once you come to terms with yourself and your problems, read Obsessive Love. It gives clear concise directions on how to stop obsessing using behavior conditioning. The psychological techniques in this book really work because they do not focus on appealing to your logical mind but to your illogical emotions and thoughts. This book also provides some insight on how you got this way and it helps you to understand how the person you are obsessing over feels. That is important. This is a great book that really helps deal with a sickness appropriately. It is not a quick fix it is not cheesy. It deals you the truth and then tells you exercises to do everyday to help you deal with the pain. It takes work and dedication to make yourself a healthier person but with this book, you can do it.

This book takes an amazingly balanced view. It describes the complete dynamics of all types of incest, including Father-Daughter, Mother-Son, Father-Son, Mother-Daughter, and extended family. It also has an excellent chapter on suggested modifications to our legal and social system that would help the problem.

I do not agree with the review that the book describes the aggressor as always being some kind of horrible person. Sometimes this is the case, but the book shows a more significant social issue in that the aggressor is often "the average joe" with a significant boundary crossing issue that must be resolved. She indicates that incest may be a much more prevalent problem than most people are willing to admit, particularly if you extend the definition of incest to include inappropriate sexual behaviors beyond intercourse, and may affect up to 40% of women in the U.S.!

I found Susan Forward's suggestions that our social outrage and reactions to the incest taboo are very destructive to society, in that it prevents disclosure of incest, and makes positive and effective treatment of the victim and the aggressor very difficult; that our reaction in this particular kind of crime, society and the family are almost always better served by modifications of our legal system to better treat the entire family dynamic as well as the personal issues of the aggressor, who she claims is the "most easily rehabilitated" of all of the sex offenders. I was surprised to learn that she has seen success rates of up to 90% in reuniting entire families after incidents of incest, which would be impossible if the offenders were the stereotypical "heartless scum" that we see in the popular media.

All this from a person who herself was a victim of incest.

I think this book should be required reading in our high schools.

This book is very well written and helped me through a tough period in my life when I read it in the 80's. I had been having flashbacks and decided to see if I could figure out what was going on. It provided me with a blueprint and a course of action, which helped me find myself and do something about what had happened to me. I would recommend this book to any victims of childhood sexual abuse.

This is the best book I've read. Very easy to read. It describes the characteristics of a child molester. It explained that these people have no compassion or empathy for others and that's how they are able to do such awful things. I highly recommend this book.

There are a lot of people who think that divorce is wrong, or a full-blown sin. I believe all of those people, as well as others, should read this book. Dr. Forward points out that leaving a relationship is a right, not a privilege, and gives an insightful portrait into the motivations of people, married, divorced, or single, who just can't let go. PLEASE READ!

This book verbalized so much of what I couldn't make sense of as a child. Forward has an unusual understanding of the workings of "toxic parents" -- indeed, the very term "toxic" describes very well (much more descriptive than the word "abusive," which is rather general and is now associated with many things) the nature of such parents. One of the unusually insightful things that Forward does in this book is that she dares to suggest that it is not necessary to forgive one's toxic parents to heal. This is a controversial stance she takes, but from personal experience, I see her statement to ring true. As a client of hers summed up, "God wants me to get better more than he wants me to forgive." Naturally, Forward's statement should not be misconstrued as to mean that you should not forgive. She merely means that forgiveness should come as a second step in the healing process, if at all. The book offers very insightful and helpful healing tools. The checklists and exercises the author has devised are right to the point and obviously evidence a lot of thought and care on the author's part. This seems to be one of the best books out there to help abused children/adults of abusive parents. Bonuses: very little, if any, psychobabble!! Also, very easy-to-read language. For adult abused children dealing with issues related to past abuse, this book will most certainly bring up many emotions.

I have been interested in the field of childhood trauma for ten years and found Toxic Parents to be one of the most direct and practical things I have ever read. I think it will be transformational both for individuals who are trying to move beyond a difficult past and for therapists who want to grapple with a remarkably simple and direct approach to psychological healing. The more I think about this book, the more I realize how strange (and telling) it is that the author's approach is not already standard in the fields of self-help and psychotherapy. I suspect it will be before long; it's just too good, too real, and too direct not to become so. There really isn't much else I want to say about this book; read it and decide for yourself. If you're miserable, order it by One-Click.

There are several other books that, like Toxic Parents, go to the core issues. For the typical self-helper, these books will be a more challenging read than Toxic Parents, but I think many will find them worth the effort. For therapists and intellectually sophisticated self-helpers, these books are essential. The books I refer to are (a) anything and everything by Alice Miller (including Prisoners of Childhood [read the original text, currently available only in hardcover], For Your Own Good, and Banished Knowledge); (b) Betrayal Trauma by Jennifer Freyd; (c) Making Sense of Suffering by J. Konrad Stettbacher; and (d) Soul Murder by Morton Schatzman. Note that this last book is inexplicably out of print; don't confuse it with an in-print book of the same title by Leonard Schengold; you can get Schatzman's book from libraries or via interlibrary loan.

Toxic Parents, plus the other books just listed, should be considered core reading for anyone serious about psychological healing. There might be some others that I haven't "discovered" yet (emails welcome!), but these are pretty darn great. In my view, the world is stuffed full with facile self-help books and bloated psychological trash. If some magical spirit could wipe them all into a big, green, smelly dumpster, and replace them with the books discussed here, the world would rapidly become a much happier and healthier place.

I have purchased three copies, one for my husband and two for his sisters. Upon receiving the shipment I read this book again. Five & a half years ago, a friend suggested that I read it and it reassured me about the observations I was that stunned me. Toxic parents can have a devastating effect that brings on shame, preventing some from seeking help early in life and the saddest legacy is that it gets past on for generations.

Any adult who emotionally strips their child of self-esteem, self-worth and confidence is a Toxic parent! Any parent who enables the abuser...is also a Toxic parent! And sadly to say, any victim who chooses not to overcome the hurtful legacy can potentially become a Toxic sibling, a Toxic spouse or a Toxic friend.

I never thought that I would, one day, wake up to the realization that I was in a Toxic relationship... sometimes it sneaks up on you! I "ROCKED THE BOAT" and endured a backlash from my husband and his family this book made me realize that I had to stick to my guns if I wanted to have a healthy marriage.

Nobody should ever feel obligated to hide or burden the family shame.