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milkbadger's reviews
90 reviews
The Seasons of Change: Using Nature's Wisdom to Grow Through Life's Inevitable Ups and Downs by Carol L. McClelland
1.0
Self-help book loaned to me by a premarital counselor. McClelland analogizes the life transitions of middle-class North Americans to the four planetary seasons, each season purportedly representing a universal stage of the process that all people undergo during these transitions.
While McClelland's mixed metaphors and Gaia spirituality are turn-offs for an intellectual like me, on an intellectual level I think the book's main failure is the way in which it subsumes a variety of problems and issues under the single rubric of "change". McClelland's oversimplifying narrative interprets failure to overcome difficulty as statis in a generic psycho-spiritual cycle, statis for which she offers a number of simple psychological diagnoses and antidotes. These explanations, I believe, are likely to misrepresent the more complex, overarching narratives that are operative in people's lives and may even be a hindrance to obtaining self-knowledge.
Despite these weaknesses, I suppose a framework as flawed as McClelland's might be valuable to some people for the sheer fact that it spurs any reflection at all. Of course, for this purpose, almost any bad, clichéd metaphor will do: "change as a rainbow", "change as a cross-country trip", "change as a loaf of bread rising in the oven". But I think most wisdom seekers would be better served by reading M. Scott Peck's The Road Less Traveled.
While McClelland's mixed metaphors and Gaia spirituality are turn-offs for an intellectual like me, on an intellectual level I think the book's main failure is the way in which it subsumes a variety of problems and issues under the single rubric of "change". McClelland's oversimplifying narrative interprets failure to overcome difficulty as statis in a generic psycho-spiritual cycle, statis for which she offers a number of simple psychological diagnoses and antidotes. These explanations, I believe, are likely to misrepresent the more complex, overarching narratives that are operative in people's lives and may even be a hindrance to obtaining self-knowledge.
Despite these weaknesses, I suppose a framework as flawed as McClelland's might be valuable to some people for the sheer fact that it spurs any reflection at all. Of course, for this purpose, almost any bad, clichéd metaphor will do: "change as a rainbow", "change as a cross-country trip", "change as a loaf of bread rising in the oven". But I think most wisdom seekers would be better served by reading M. Scott Peck's The Road Less Traveled.