Saturday, April 7, 2012

Book Review: Getting the love you want: A guide for couples, 20th anniversary edition.

By Chris


Originally published in 1988 Getting the love you want has been updated with a new chapter. 


This book is written by Harville Hendrix, Ph.D., in partnership with his wife, Helen LaKelly Hunt, PhD., they originated Imago Relationship Therapy, a unique healing process for couples, prospective couples, and parents.


This book is broken into three sections.  The first section covers our old brain.  It describes that for the first 10-12 months of life we live in an Edenistic state where all of our wants and needs are met and fulfilled. This is the time where our "old brain" starts to form our basis of relationships with our parents.


The second section covers our higher reasoning new brain.  This is where when we are attracted to a potential partner we find remnants of our relationships with our parents.  We try to recreate the unfinished business that we have with our parents and resolve it with our partners.  We learn how to recognize what we are doing and understand ourselves better.


The third section is the exercises. Here you'll be taken through a series of exercises that you can do at home that have been actually used in the author's practice. They're easy to do and involve writing. They are interesting and practical, blended in a very readable format. Keep in mind however that this is not a quick fix book full of easy answers. 

Here is an extraordinary practical guide to resolving problems, using 16 exercises to enhance communication, stop self-defeating behavior, and achieve mutual emotional satisfaction. With Hendrix's advice, the all-too-common marital power struggle can be gradually transformed into a mutually beneficial process of spiritual and emotional growth.

 Hendrix, Harville. (2007). Getting the love you want: A guide for couples, 20th anniversary edition. New York, NY: Henry Holt & Co.

2 comments:

  1. This seems like an interesting book. I like that there are excercises in the end to really get into what you learned. You said it was just republished with a new chapter, what was in the new chapter that was so important it constituted reprinting the whole book?

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  2. They added a new chapter as it was 20 years later and recapped what they have learned from observing relationships. How even 20 years later the same basics still apply. The exercises are great. I hope you enjoy the book as much as I did. Thanks for the question Kaylee.

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