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magnalia 's review for:
The Courage to Be Disliked: How to Free Yourself, Change your Life and Achieve Real Happiness
by Fumitake Koga, Ichiro Kishimi
If choosing between climbing to the top of the mountain or dancing without a special route in mind, choose dancing. Life is not a route with a finish line, it’s a collection of dots that together make a nice journey.
Similar to many other readers of this book, I was also surprised to discover that besides Freud and Jung there was also Alfred Adler - "Freud's most practical colleague" as Jordan Peterson describes him.
The book provides a nice overview of the key concepts in Adlerian psychology (also called Individual psychology). Some of Adler’s key ideas can be found nowadays in every book on happiness or relationship building - such as self-acceptance as the way for a happier life (no need to be special), developing horizontal and not vertical relationships (“I’m OK, you are OK”), contributing to others to feel worthy, etc.
So definitely a worthwhile read.
What I didn’t like:
The dialogue style of this book. I understand what the authors wanted to achieve, but the end result felt rather fake to me. Unlike Platonic dialogues, this is more of a Q&A rather than a proper deep conversation. Youth is here to quickly rebel and then quickly agree, even if his questions were not fully answered, and philosopher - to introduce a concept after concept.
Statement that “all problems are interpersonal relationship problems. To get rid of your problems, all you can do is live in the universe all alone.” Ear-catcher, but too generalizing for me, I wonder what did Adler think of hunger, poverty, sickness, corruption and other social and economic issues that definitely create problems for people. Unfortunately the book doesn’t cover this at all. So I can only agree with this idea in case of a person who has everything for a happy life, yet still unhappy.
So this a good book for anyone who doesn’t have reasons not to be happy, yet still feels unhappy, worries about other’s opinions, and have relationship problems that are hard to resolve.
Similar to many other readers of this book, I was also surprised to discover that besides Freud and Jung there was also Alfred Adler - "Freud's most practical colleague" as Jordan Peterson describes him.
The book provides a nice overview of the key concepts in Adlerian psychology (also called Individual psychology). Some of Adler’s key ideas can be found nowadays in every book on happiness or relationship building - such as self-acceptance as the way for a happier life (no need to be special), developing horizontal and not vertical relationships (“I’m OK, you are OK”), contributing to others to feel worthy, etc.
So definitely a worthwhile read.
What I didn’t like:
The dialogue style of this book. I understand what the authors wanted to achieve, but the end result felt rather fake to me. Unlike Platonic dialogues, this is more of a Q&A rather than a proper deep conversation. Youth is here to quickly rebel and then quickly agree, even if his questions were not fully answered, and philosopher - to introduce a concept after concept.
Statement that “all problems are interpersonal relationship problems. To get rid of your problems, all you can do is live in the universe all alone.” Ear-catcher, but too generalizing for me, I wonder what did Adler think of hunger, poverty, sickness, corruption and other social and economic issues that definitely create problems for people. Unfortunately the book doesn’t cover this at all. So I can only agree with this idea in case of a person who has everything for a happy life, yet still unhappy.
So this a good book for anyone who doesn’t have reasons not to be happy, yet still feels unhappy, worries about other’s opinions, and have relationship problems that are hard to resolve.