Reviews for The other side of the couch

The average rating for The other side of the couch based on 2 reviews is 2 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-07-13 00:00:00 Brandie Lawson A good premise, but a flawed execution. Worth reading if you have an interest in one of the men, but I wouldn't hold this up as a prime example of scholarship... Nicholi never quite gets into his groove when he discusses these two men. Sometimes he switches back and forth between them with each paragraph, and sometimes he devotes whole long sections to one man, before ending it and moving on to another long section for the next. He constantly throws in quotes, but never really addresses, evaluates, or analyzes them enough for the reader -- he should be using quotes to get a sense for who the man is, pointing out unique characteristics, distinctions in personality, inconsistencies in worldview... but so often he leaves the quote hanging there and moves on to another idea. There were also key points in Lewis's life that he got wrong or ignored. Nicholi refers to The Screwtape Letters as "an address at a dinner for young devils in training" -- but this is not the format for The Screwtape Letters. The Screwtape Letters are letters from one demon to another over a long period of time. It's Screwtape Proposes a Toast that is formatted as an address at a dinner, which is section of prose Lewis added as an addendum to the book publication 15 years later. Nicholi also never addresses Lewis's relationship with Mrs. Moore at all, which is often claimed to have been romantic, in his section on sex and love. And for being a debate, this discussion seems a little off-kilter. On the one hand you have a late 19th century scientist writing in the medical field, and on the other hand an early 20th century classicist/apologist, writing about literature and philosophy. It's clear who Nicholi favors in this comparison, and if I were an atheist I think I would be very annoyed by how shallow he takes some of Freud's points. There's a reason these two men never met or talked, and often this debate felt contrived, forced, and uneven. Often Nicholi lapses into purely biographical information for these authors in his "debate" -- something necessary only to a certain degree in a comparative book like this. Throwing out facts and quotes from a person's life doesn't make for a good "debate" unless you are actually going to contrast and juxtapose the two points of view. So often he throws out useless questions, but this is not a classroom where students need to think about these issues to study for a test -- this is a scholarly, researched, analytical book that should be doing the thinking for the reader! So often I winced at formulaic questions like "So what was Freud's views on topic A?" or "Can the answer to Freud's views on this be seen in his life and writings?" or "So is love really only about sex?" (the last one is actually on page 162). Sometimes he even throws in his own perspective with a few "I did this..." statements, and two sentences later he's quoting Freud saying "I think this..." with barely any transition. It's disorienting for the reader to be tossed around so much. Nicholi even is so self-inflated as to put in a "I have often wondered why," about the fact that Anna Freud never married. Why don't you actually analyze why you think she never married, instead of commenting that you're curious!? Nicholi needed an editor to chop stuff out and heavily rearrange his ideas. And make him write more. Good topics about good authors, but this guy's definitely no Alister E. McGrath.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-11-24 00:00:00 Nicolas Quilter I'm a bit conflicted about how I feel about this book. It was for sure worth the read; I learned a lot, and I went through different emotions as I read it and thought both about the material in the book and how the ideas fit into my life. The book is flawed, in my opinion, but could of the bias it takes on the side of Lewis. It's main argument boiled down to: Freud had a depressing life and was an atheist, Lewis had an enjoyable life and was a believer, ergo, believing is the right way to go. I don't think this makes Lewis' worldview right or Freud's wrong, but instead are the possible costs/benefits of these worldviews. And yet, I am compelled to somewhat agree with this, though not quite full-heartily. I've been agnostic all of my adult life, and while secular humanism, to me, has a wonderful, uplifting aspect to it, this aspect kinda has a peak to it, and you can only suck so much out of that peak at any one time. The rest of this worldview has a lot of emptiness and despair in to it. This is what troubled Freud most of his life, what troubled Lewis during the first half of his life, and has recently been shaking my own "non belief." I think that both Freud and Lewis have accurate views of the other's worldviews. Freud says we come up with religion because we need that authority in our lives that we loose when we grow out of childhood. Lewis says, in terms of his own atheism at one point, says that quite often he was mad at God more than he didn't believe in God. This is how I often find myself: though I can rationalize that there is no God, I often hate God for not existing. Lewis sees this kind of feeling as an innate desire for God that we all have, which to him is a main piece of evidence for God's existence. I don't see that as evidence of God's existence, but I can see and feel the atheist's anger at God and the believer's need to create God. In addition, I generally just learned a lot from the book; much of it is made up of the letters and works of the subjects and makes me want to seek out more to read from Freud and Lewis. So with that said, this is a book that I liked reading, though I didn't totally like some of the basis for the book in general.