As someone who has been in group therapy for a while, I must say this is a terrific book. What I like about it is that it is not a "self-help," feel good book. The book doesn't necessarily tell us anything we don't already know. But it crystallizes things with astonishing lucidity. Get this book--and share it with your partner. Talk about it in bed.

This book has something for everyone that is experiencing some form of difficulty with cultivating healthy intimate relationships. By this I mean it will help those that have not acknowledged that they have difficulties and it is especially powerful for people like myself who have been searching for answers to their problems with intimate relationships. Firestone's clear and succinct writing style makes it possible to relate and identify with various issues that may apply to you. His approach is clinical at times but his formula is very simple: identification of issue, cause of issue and alternatives for dealing with the issue. Before reading this book make a promise that if you see yourself in any of the descriptions, don't run or turn to denial, be honest with yourself. Read the particular passage a couple of times. It helps with acceptance. I highly recommend this book.

Robert Firestone and Joyce Catlett bring almost 40 years of combined clinical experience to bear in Fear Of Intimacy, challenging traditional ways of thinking about couples and families. They argue that adult interpersonal and familial relationships fail because of psychological defenses formed in childhood acting as a barrier to closeness in adulthood. A range of cross-generation case studies and personal accounts illustrate and document how the "fantasy bond" has become a destructive form of self-parenting, jeopardizing meaningful attachments. An important, scholarly, and "user friendly" addition to psychology and counseling libraries, Fear Of Intimacy is impressively written in clear, jargon-free language making the work easily accessible to psychologists and counselors seeking to help couples identify and overcome distortions of the self, thereby fostering healthy bonding and relations with their loved ones.

This excellent book has changed my life, helping me to become a happier person and putting me on the road to my first good relationship. As I was reading it, I would come to new chapters and say, "well this certainly doesn't apply to me" (e.g. "Idealization of the Family"), but I quickly learned that those chapters did indeed apply. I now refer to it as my Bible because I so often talk about it to my friends and encourage them to read it. The section on Theoretcial Issues is probably too academic for most readers, and I am skeptical about how much schizophrenics can really be helped by these techniques. But I think the general population would be greatly helped by the ideas in the book.

many books of this nature havebeen revelations for me. however, this is THE one! if i hadto choose for you one book thatsays it all it is this one. thisis the one that through aprocess of reading, digesting andapplication will transform you.this is truly life changing stuff!first time through my mouth wasagape most of the time. virtuallyevery line was a light bulb experience.thank you dr. firestone!!!

One of the best, most powerful books ever writen. Reading this book will be painful, but worth it. It's worth at least 10 years of therapy.

"Conquer Your Critical Inner Voice: A Revolutionary Program to Counter Negative Thoughts and Live Free from Imagined Limitations" is a powerful therapeutic work for dealing with the inner voice that holds us back. It is both an explanatory text that describes how we acquire a critical inner voice and its purpose in our lives and a workbook that walks the reader through exercises, questionaires and other activities to get it under control.

If you find that no matter what you do you don't seem to get what you want in life or you are often engaged in self-talk that is not positive in nature then this workbook could be the path to changing your life. A highly recommended read.

Collaboratively written by clinical psychologists Robert W. Firestone and Lisa Firestone, with the assistance of author/lecturer Joyce Catlett, Conquer Your Critical Inner Voice is an impressively "user friendly" self-help guide to learning how to overcome negative thoughts and self-imposed limitations. Individual chapters address how excessive self-criticism can interfere with intimacy, career, and general quality of life, and how it can co-opt oneself into addictive and unhealthily dependent behaviors. Strategies for learning how to restore balance and contentment to one's way of life, and also for choosing an effective therapist, offer a way out of the endless downward spiral of self-depreciating negativity. Conquer Your Critical Inner Voice is a highly recommended addition to personal reading lists and community library self-improvement, self-help reference collections.

Yes, the blurb is correct. Choose your section in the book and run through the inventories with a pencil and you will be amazed how your inner voice is sucking away at your joy and vitality. Put the little sucker in its place.