Book – Trouver son propre chemin

Book – Trouver son propre chemin

Full title adds : Un guide pour redéfinir le sense de sa vie et réussir l'essentiel 

Translation of the title : Finding one's own path, a guide to redefine one's Life's meaning and succeed in essentials 

By : Isabelle Filliozat

Score : 0/10
Year : 1992

Publisher : Belfond

ISBN: 9782266076302

Pages : 282*

Language : French 

When I started reading this book, I thought that because its author, Isabelle Filliozat, supposed psychotherapist for 10 years prior to its publication, would bring helpful and sound tips and advice in this self-help book, assuming she'd use psychological knowledge in the background. 


However, it didn't turn out this way. She sure brought on many questions and pieces of advice in a basic, mostly jargon-free (French) language, leading the readers into introspection and self-analysis in order to find one's path in life, but, the few occurrences where she used jargon, she did so in a dangerous way. 

For ex,  in a passage about phobias, she over-simplifies both the developmental causes, and their treatment, as, indeed, according to her, only 3 sessions with a therapist would be enough, which I know for a fact that both the causes and treatments are far more complicated and complex than that! Too bad she reduces it so much. 

Some of the problems exposed are too simplistic and don't take into account abusive and toxic persons whom we shouldn't accept on the sole merit of our own expectations and introspection, simply because there are people like that, who abuse others' kindness, and the author's comments are, at times, victim-blaming. 

Another complain I have regards an exercise in 'dissociation' as if it were a positive psychological technique- here, she suggests dissociating (using the term), and detaching oneself to look upon oneself externally in order to evaluate and learn, but the term isn't distinguished from what we know as dissociation disorder.  I found this to potentially be the most damaging piece of advice any author, especially supposed to be a psychotherapist, could offer to anyone, as a lot of patients already suffering from some mental illnesses where dissociation is a symptom (this is my own case), and where it can be detrimental even without trying to trigger it on purpose, so It could cause some troubles and complications in healing.  Any reader who hadn't known about the terminology and potential risks, would learn fallacies from this book. 

She also gives some weird advice on putting oneself in the mindset of a person we know to embody qualities, or who have specific skills we lack in, in order to learn them, simply by the fact that we admire them and that by imagining ourselves in their place, we would feel the same emotions and learn their techniques, via the "skills bank'' each of us deposits into as part of the human "collective unconscious" which she refers to also as "human reservoir of knowledge" and "morphogenetic field"... 


These and other tips in 'programming oneself to grow and learn' in various pseudoscientific ways, very similar to the so-called 'law of attraction', veer so far off the path of science and psychology, that I fear this book isn't to be read by anyone who doesn't know better....because the reader must exercise extreme caution, filtering out a LOT from the book's content.  

Very few of her exercises make total sense, namely two : mindful meditation and introspection to accept our flaws and learn from them in order to grow, but all the others are downright preposterous  - such as the ones involving dreams and all those pseudoscience based pieces of advice and techniques given.  

Only 2 exercises, out of 65 are sound ; only 2 pages out of 265 (as the text starts on p.17) ; this is far too light to even warrant a 1/10 score, hence the absolutely negated 0!

As I posted on my social media, I give this book away, to be burnt. This is how dangerous I feel the book could be to others, that I prefer getting totally rid of it.