New Peoplemaking
Satir, Virginia. 1988. New Peoplemaking. 1st ed. Science and Behavior Books.
Rating:
6
Review:
Long-winded but decent advice.
I don’t know that giving a summary of the book is feasible, so I’ll just point out a few things that I liked and didn’t like. First, the book is huge, 385 pages. Admittedly what Satir has to say is important and perhaps even very beneficial to some people, but I highly doubt anyone but the seriously interested in psychological self-help will wade their way through every page of this book – even though the type is big and there are gobs of pictures. Perhaps this will sound demeaning to Americans but we (I’m American too) seem to like answers that come in small packages; this is not a small package answer. I guess what I’m saying is that she could have covered all of the information in about half the space – cutting out a lot of unneeded stuff.
Now something positive: I think the content is pretty good. Satir has simplified her message to where the educated layperson can read it and omitted all of the psycho-babble. The advice she gives really reads like common sense, but that is the subtlety of the message – it sounds just like the way that things should be (for the most part) which, to me at least, means she is probably on the right track.
There are a couple of other things about the book that I didn’t particularly like. First, near the end of the book Satir starts giving advice on how to attain world peace and how to solve the world’s problems. Well, she’s a family therapist and not a political scientist or a sociologist – she is out of her league here. What really drives the point home (pun is intended as you will see) is that she compares everything – national governments, international societies, etc. – to families. I guess when you only have a hammer (family therapy experience), everything begins to look like a nail (solving world hunger, ending the use of war to resolve conflicts, etc.) and can be solved the same way. Satir may know quite a bit about families, but I really didn’t buy her advice on solving world problems.
Satir also discusses the notion of spirituality. Now, what makes this so interesting is that she seems to think that spirituality and understanding spirituality are very important for resolving mental health and family relations issues, as a matter of fact, I believe she calls it the most important thing that people can do to get healthy. But she only spends one chapter discussing spirituality. I’m guessing that she realizes that her book will absolutely not appeal to ‘a’-spiritual people if she emphasizes spirituality too much so she cut the chapter short and left it at that. Well, maybe that was a good decision.
There are three more things I’ll mention briefly and then I’m done. First, the concept of a healthy family is a relative one. She makes attempts to rationalize why her conception of a ‘healthy’ family is the right one, but they aren’t particularly convincing. But, keep in mind, her conception is likely the societal norm; the point I am trying to make is that she doesn’t do a good job of arguing her perspective. This leads to her biases. She doesn’t reveal them until the end, but we end up finding out that she is a pacifist and feminist in either the last or second to last chapter. In my opinion, things like that should be revealed up front. Again, keep in mind that I don’t disagree with those perspectives or opinions, I just think she should have revealed her biases at the beginning of the book instead of at the end.
Lastly, she has a tendency to make broad, sweeping statements about the way things are (how families were in the late 1800s for example) and fails to cite any references to back up her claims. Sure, this is a self-help book for the layperson, but this leaves the scholar wanting for evidence for her claims.
Overall, like I said above, I think the book has good advice. Whether or not it will make a difference for people pr families, I don’t know. If you have to read the whole thing to change, then probably not; it’s just too long. The exercises she suggest sound interesting, but I don’t have any kids and most of them are designed around kids. Those that are for couples, well, I guess I could try them, but I think my relationship with my significant other is pretty good, so I’ll pass for now and if there are problems, perhaps I’ll pull it back out in the future. If you really think that you would be willing to use the exercises and you are committed to reading a very long book, perhaps this will help. If you are looking for a quick fix (which is not likely to help anyway), then don’t waste your time or money because it isn’t until you are willing to really work to make things better that something like a self-help book like The New Peoplemaking will make a difference.