Lessons for Living: What Only Adversity Can Teach You

In these insightful if uneven essays reworked from the 1990s and early 2000s, psychiatrist Stutz (coauthor of Coming Alive) addresses a host of common emotional problems within an action-oriented psychotherapeutic framework. After becoming “demoralized” early in his career by the “inability of psychiatry to really help patients,” Stutz developed “The Tools,” a system designed to unlock “the infinite wisdom of the present” through a focus on routine skills practice (“If you want to change a process, you need to work on it daily”), forward motion (“the highest value is taking the next step into your future”), and a belief in higher forces, whether religious or nondenominational (“God or flow or the unconscious”). The selections tackle such problems as anger, insecurity, and relationship struggles, devoting particular attention to “Part X,” an “inner adversary” that can be defeated through such interventions as praying or tapping into the “powerful energy... you get when you deprive yourself of an addiction.” Despite some repetition between essays and a tendency toward generalities (“make every day you live, every action you take, personally meaningful”), readers will appreciate the author’s wise and well-informed observations, which are often distilled into salient takeaways, such as this one from the entry on familial guilt and obligation: “only what you give to others in free will has lasting value.” Patient readers will find plenty of wisdom here. (Nov.)

Correction: An earlier version of this review mistakenly stated that the author co-developed “The Tools.”