Cherishment: A Psychology of the Heart

by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Faith Bethelard

A psychoanalys and psychotherapist team up to explore the parent/child relationship, discovering that healthy dependency is based on the needs of the individuals involved in relationship. Original.

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology

272 pages, Hardcover

First published February 25, 2000

Reviews

[Pmalcpoet Pat Malcolm · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an important book, brief but thoughtful, exploring the concept of how we love others and wish to be loved by them. It is a book of psychology, but so much more, drawing from ancient traditions and applying these concepts to modern lives in need of love. The final chapter addresses what a culture of cherishment would look like. The idea of love as reciprocal caring isn't new, but Youn'Breuhl and co-author Faith Bethelard go further, to benevolence, well-wishing, and goodwill as further elements in spontaneous affection for others. If you want to be thoughtful for a while about how you love others, how you love yourself, and how you really want to be loved in return, this is a book for you.

[Nikki Karalekas · Rating 3 out of 5]

The core idea is lovely: we need to receive love in order to give love. The meanderings into all that can go wrong when that doesn’t happen and the renegotiations that therapy can offer are inspiring. I enjoyed the foray into the Homeric and Japanese traditions, which felt refreshing for psychoanalysis—and made me want to read the Iliad and the Odyssey. But, in the end, this was too heavy on the ego psychology to impact me as much as I would have liked. It also was not helped by the writing, which became repetitive and too “meta” to offer much substance by the end. The last chapter felt especially rushed and unedited.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just did not like the way the authors wrote the story, as a journey of the discovery of this "new" word, or concept, in Freudian psychology - translated from Japanese amae. I loved the idea of it, from the title, but did not expect it to be so Freudian in style - of using many words to describe very little. There are a few parts here that are more meaty and good, but so much is just the authors putting too much into this idea of theirs - that ends up being not that big of a deal in my eyes. I assume that if one is deeply into Freudian psychology, then there is a bit more here of interest.

[Reader · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m about 60 pages in and I do not think I’m going to continue reading. To echo another review I saw here, it feels like there is a lot of explaining happening that isn’t necessary. The entire second chapter so far has been mind-numbing to read, often times I’ll skip entire pages and the same concept is being explained for the second or third time. The writing style I do also find to be tricky at times, I’ve found myself going back and reading the same paragraph or sentence multiple times trying to understand what was said. There were also many times I would pick up this book, read 3 pages and put it down again.
I’m torn because other times there are very wonderfully written passages where I find myself flying through the pages, and I do find the core concept to be very insightful, and I do enjoy the references written by the author, but unfortunately the negatives about this book are balancing out with everything positive I could say.
I’d like to follow that up with a personal note that I really can’t stand how much Freud’s work is talked about. Going back to how much I dislike this second chapter, I completely understand the heavy discussion of Taeko Doi since he birthed the initial discussion of cherishment, but I found myself waiting for them to shut up about Freud. If I wanted to learn about Freud I would read what he has researched!!!!! Please discuss what YOU think cherishment is!! This is why I am here!!