Book Review: Families And How To Survive Them by John Cleese and Robin Skynner

This is a curious and mostly charming book about therapy. It is presented as a (somewhat contrived) Socratic dialogue between Skynner the teacher and Cleese the pupil. Skynner lectures on while Cleese interjects with "that's too clever to be convincing" and other witty remarks. It is fun to have a somewhat sceptical interlocutor but it does get a little wearisome after a while.

The basic of the premise is much the same as Larkin's "This Be The Verse". We all have various neuroses and blockers that wall off parts of our personalities. These prevent us from living our best lives and are often (inadvertently) reinforced by our families and spouses. The solution? Go to therapy and take your family with you!

Some of the notions within the book are a little outdated. The stuff about homosexuality and "trans-sexuals" probably doesn't stand up to modern scrutiny. They're neither cruel nor callous when discussing it, and seem to agree that so-called conversion will do more harm than good. Similarly, while not excruciatingly sexist, it is a bit painfully blokey. The constant whinging about "women’s libbers" doesn't help - nor the stuff about Cleese hitting his daughter - and the book would have been better if anyone other than a PSM had been involved.

Still, for a book written in 1983 there are some terrifyingly modern predictions within its pages:

John:  You mean a politician who’s been a rebel all his life might find it difficult to be sufficiently firm if he ever got put in a position of power?

Robin:  Either that, or else he’d become very authoritarian but pretend that all his decisions were really being made democratically, on behalf of the silent majority perhaps, or the proletariat.

I can't think of anyone like that. Can you?

Similarly, the book is rather good at turning its ire onto groups of people:

John:  So if we look at mainstream British politics, it’s perfectly healthy that the parties should get worked up and angry with each other during a debate or an election, because they can let those feelings go later and talk to each other on a friendly basis.

Robin:  Yes. After all, politics is the art of the possible, isn’t it? No one’s going to have exactly the same views, so you need to respect each other’s differences and try to reach a reasonable compromise if you can.

John:  But the real extremists have difficulty with this, don’t they? They don’t seem to be able to see their political opponents as people who happen to hold different opinions. They really seem to view them as bad people.

Robin:  Well, you see, people like this need to use their opponents as dustbins, somewhere they can dump all the bits of themselves that they can’t accept. Just like the scapegoat in a sick family. So they need to hate their opponents to keep themselves sane.

Do you feel seen?

Like lots of books, it is very keen on diagnosing the problem but slightly hazy about providing the solution. There aren't any exercises to do or worksheets to fill in. I think it is assumed that anyone reading the book will recognise themselves in the pages and immediately pick up the Yellow Pages to find a therapist.

On a technical level, it is disappointing that the cartoon illustrations are extremely low resolution and blurry. There's also no alt text. That said, they're a bit naff; so you aren't missing out on much.

An interesting enough curio, but there are probably more rigorous and useful books out there.