The three star rating is no reflection on the authority of this book or the expertise of its author, but refers instead to the execution of the book.
I suppose the choice to make the first half of the book purely anecdotal was for the purpose of holding the readers' interest, and to that end it worked. I found the book highly engaging. However, to begin, over and over again, with patient x coming into the office exhibiting symptoms x,y, and z, and always end with the same diagnosis...it made me question whether the author ever considered that there might be some other cause to what was going on.
And, considering the subject at the center of this book, the whole thing started to come off as a bit Freudian after a while. You can almost imagine this exchange: Patient: Doctor, I'm feeling dissatisfied with my life. Doctor: Tell me about your mother.
I mean, yes, our mothers have a HUGE influence on our lives. Lord help me, I understand that as well as anyone. And I have no doubt that enmeshment exists and can have extremely damaging effects. I've witnessed firsthand those weepy, clingy mothers slobbering all over their sons and trying to control their lives in the name of "protecting their babies". Yes, it happens. Yes it's a problem. I have no beef with the subject matter of this book, and I very much appreciated the information provided in the second half. It was just the first half that had me scratching my head. I would have liked to see some other alternatives explored, but instead the book seemed to imply that EVERY time a man has trouble committing to his girlfriend, every time he becomes controlling and paranoid, every time he spends too much or too little time focusing on his career, every time he commits adultery, it's because he has a creepy, borderline inappropriate relationship with his mother. There are other factors that influence the kinds of people we grow up to be, but this book explored none of them. I know an in depth discussion of those other factors would have been outside the scope of the book, but at least a mention would have been nice, rather than implying that it's always Mama's fault.
I did enjoy the final chapter which spends a little time discussing cultural influences on the mother/son relationship and would have liked to see that expanded a bit more. Mainly because, growing up in America, we're so focused on the individualism that defines our culture we often look at other cultures and think theirs is healthier than ours. They have a sense of community which we lack. They understand the importance of family whereas we're obsessed with forcing our young people to fly the nest and never look back. The message I usually receive from the world around me is that other cultures get it right where ours usually gets it wrong. It was interesting to read this book and see someone point out other cultures and call them toxic. It wasn't surprising. Cultures are made of people and people are flawed beings, so naturally there will be toxic elements in every culture of the world. It was just a point of view I don't see often, because normally I'm listening to other Americans talking about the toxic elements in our own culture. It would be very interesting to explore this topic further and get a better perspective on toxic relationships throughout the world.