What Do You See When You Look in the Mir

Cash is an interesting writer whose main point here is that ``negative body image has little to do with outward appearance: It's a state of mind.'' His goal is to help his readers develop ``an understanding of the psychology of physical appearance--how our outer looks and our inner body image affect our lives.'' Simply put, ``despite...our preoccupation with physical attractiveness, looks aren't everything they're cracked up to be.'' To prove this observation, Cash presents a rigorous eight-point program to help readers create in their minds a new body image--ranging from ``Getting Comfortable with Your Body'' to ``Correcting Your Body Image Errors.'' Cash acknowledges that his book is rooted in basic cognitive therapy techniques, recognizing that ``our emotions stem from how we talk to ourselves about ourselves.'' To this end, he provides helpful progressive relaxation and visualization techniques to help develop what he calls the readers' ``New Inner Voice.'' The book also provides a wide range of graphs, worksheets and questionnaires that are designed to help readers explore and track their relationships to food and self-image, but ultimately these may overwhelm Cash's main concern: ``successful control over your feelings is real control--control that matters.'' (Jan.)