Raising Your Emotional Intelligence
Jeanne Segal
Owl Books (Henry Holt)  0-8050-5151-1
This book has a fatal flaw - it is out of date.  And being out of date it makes all sorts of claims and recommendations that simply aren't worth the paper they are printed on.

To be fair, some of the research that undermines this book's credibility was carried out after Raising Your Emotional Intelligence was first published (1997).  Unfortunately, however, one of the key studies was published 5 (five) years earlier.  And this is a study which effectively demolishes the whole foundation of this book.

Before I come to the study in question it is worth saying that this isn't actually a book about "Emotional Intelligence".  On the first page of the Introduction the author writes:

"Raising Your Emotional Intelligence is ... [f]ounded in my work and study over the last thirty years..."
(page 3.   Italics as in the original)

What that says, to me, is something like: "I don't think I can sell my ideas on the basis of their own worth, so I'm going to rebrand them, using the label from a best-selling product, regardless of how little similarity there is between them."

In the case of Emotional Intelligence, as described by Mayer and Salovey and by Daniel Goleman, and "emotional intelligence" as described by Jeanne Segal, I'd say that the similarity is pretty negligible.  NOT non-existent, I hasten to add, just "pretty negligible".  For example, Ms Segal rightly raises the issues of empathy and emotional awareness, but her definition of "emotional awareness" and her ideas on how to enhance it are a central part of why this book is next to useless.

We are told at one point in the book, that:

"EQ 101 in this college [i.e. in this book] is more phys ed.  The only way to stay linked to your emotions when you're going about your daily business is to keep your body constantly aware of them in the background - and that takes acute sensitivity.
(page 102.)

In order to do this you must "notice" these emotions, which may sound easy, except that we are also told that:

"Emotion is a felt experience that occurs somewhere below the bridge of the nose"
(page 235)

and we are exhorted to:

"...stay out of your head..."
(page 236)

So what the heck are we supposed to use to "notice" these background emotions, if not our cognitive functions?  How do we:

"... [bring] some emotion into full focus (100 percent attention) several times a day..."
(page 103)

if we're "staying out of our heads"?

I am guessing here that the author denigrates intellectual abilities in this cockeyed manner because, in her opinion, "emotional intelligence" is simply about getting in touch with your emotions - letting them "all hang out" as they used to say - and because she believes that EQ is so superior to IQ, and "feeling" is so much more valuable than mere thinking.
Which brings me back to the research I mentioned earlier.
We have known for some time now that "catharsis" - activities such as punching pillows to supposedly free yourself of aggression - are just as likely to have exactly the opposite effect.  Indeed, a study by W.A. Lewis and A.M. Bucher entitled "Anger, catharsis, the reformulated frustration-aggression hypothesis, and health consequences", published in Psychology, No. 29 (1992), showed there is little or no value at all in "emotional expression" except where it is accompanied by cognitive processing.
In short, the whole idea of trying to isolate our thoughts in our head and our emotions in our body (how's THAT for a mind-body split!) - as advocated throughout this book - is not only contrary to NLP thinking, it's also contrary to solid, experimentally-backed evidence.

I'm sorry, but this strikes me as yet another, wholly unjustified, attempt to jump on board Goleman's EI bandwagon.  Were it not for the mention of "emotional intelligence" in the title I sincerely doubt if it would still be in print.
Definitely a book to avoid

Mind-Body Communication in Hypnosis
The Seminars, Workshops and Lectures of Milton H. Erickson Vol. III
E. Rossi and M. Ryan(eds.)
1-85343-420-5
Although I found this book significantly less satisfying than the other 3 volumes of "Seminars, Workshops and Lectures", that is a measure of the excellence of I, II and IV, because Mind-Body Communication in Hypnosis is still way ahead of most other books on the subject.

The text is actually divided into three parts:

1. Hypnotic Alterations of Physiological Functioning
   Based on a series of seminars staged in Los Angeles in 1952
2. Symptom-based Approaches in Mind-Body Problems
   Taken from a single seminar held in san Diego in July, 1961
3. The State-dependent Memory and Learning Theory of Therapeutic Hypnosis

Part I is particularly notable for the transcribed "Question and Answer" session (pages 29-65), including such gems as Erickson's explanation of how he responded to a "behavior-problem child":

"... an eight-year-old boy was brought to me as a patient.  He devoted the first two hours in my office to an effort to exasperate me beyond all control.  And he really did a beautiful job of it!  However, he found out that I could lean back in my chair, and sit, and watch him; and he couldn't quite inderstand that. ... By my nonresistance, my just sitting there, left him in an awful quandry, which I further secured by saying the following: 'I don't think you ought to open my cigarette box, but it's there, isn't it?  And you can open it, can you not?  It's just that I think you shouldn't, but I'm sure you can.  And it's right there.'
"With those statements, I had given and denied permission; he had to make a choice.  Naturally his choice was, 'I don't need to punish that guy.'  He was quite correct." (pages 60-61.  Italics as in the original text)

The rest of Parts I and II are taken up with various commentaries by Erickson, which frequently include fragments of Ericksonian speech patterns that can be used almost straight from the page, such as:

"I don't know when you will stop wetting the bed, I really don't care.  It isn't my bed.
When I say, 'It isn't my bed,' I am saying a whole volume.  I am telling the patient I would literally rub his nose in his own bed.  It is his bed, and he knows it, and I don't care.  But he does, and I have told him to care and to care with utter intensity."" (page 139.  Bold typeface as in the original text)

Part III consists entirely of a 56 page study by Rossi which is designed to:

"... update Erickson's concepts of the 'neuro-psycho-physiological' basis of therapeutic hypnosis and outline how his naturalistic approach can be applied to a variety of mind-body disorders that traditionally have been called 'psychosomatic.' "

It must be said that there are certain elements of the book I found a little idiosyncratic.
For example, the list of presuppositions (page 15) are treated as though they are the 13 basic presuppositions of NLP.  Entry #4: "The map becomes the territory" (which struck me as a somewhat fatalistic observation) is one I have never seen on any other list; whilst entry #12: "Modelling excellent behaviour leads to excellence" seems to hark back to the days of a far 'younger', dewy-eyed version of NLP.  (There is a comment by Leslie Cameron-Bandler, as was, reported on Lee Lady's site - see the links page - which categorically rejects this heavily simplistic view of the power of modelling.)

I was also a little puzzled by some of the entries and categorising in the 'Booklist' (pages 140-141).  The O'Connor and McDermott book Principles of NLP (reviewed on this site) is in the NLP - basic list, whilst Introducing NLP (O'Connor and Seymour - also reviewed on this site) is listed as NLP - more advanced.
Likewise including Tony Robbins' Notes from a Friend as NLP - basic, or listing Covey's Seven Habits anywhere at all, raise interesting questions about the authors' view of what NLP is all about.

And having said all that, as the introduction to this review suggested, my overall response to this book is a definite 'thumbs up'.
As chance would have it, I was actually preparing a 'train-the-trainer' course at the time I read this book, and it certainly sparked off a number of useful insights and ideas.
Although originally written specifically for members of their own specialised branch of 'education', I readily agree with the authors' decision to re-target it at the teaching/training professions as a whole.

Whilst this is still not the NLP-oriented teaching/training book, I personally found it much more accessible than some existing texts which address this topic, such as Dynamic Learning, for example.
Highly recommended for anyone working in the fields of education/training, especially those readers who are (relative) newcomers to NLP. * * * * * *
(The cover price also includes an audio-cassette of the stories and guided fantasies which appear in the book.  Unfortunately no tape was available as this review was being prepared.)

NLP at Work   (2nd edition, 2002)
Sue Knight
Nicholas Brearley   ISBN 1-85788-302-0
The first edition of this book, published in 1995 at £12.99, ran to 230 pages, including a section of exercises and a useful Biblography of NLP and NLP-related books.
Seven years later the book has jumped in size to a relatively massive 374 pages, but the price has only gone up to £14.99.  And if that was all there was to tell then this would be quite an enthusiastic review.  But it isn't, so it isn't.

When I reviewed the original book I commented that "the content is well up to standard".  That was, however, the "standard" as it was six or seven years ago, when books on NLP were relatively few and far between.  In 2002 the standard has moved on considerably, and in my opinion, despite the growth in sheer page numbers, the author has not reflected that change.

The first thing that struck me was the decision to adopt American spelling.  Well, sort of.  Words like "dialogue" (1995) have now become "dialog" (2002) and "summarise" (1995) has become "summarize" (2002).  But whoever was doing the "translation" seems to have fallen off their perch from time to time, so "kinaesthetic" (1995) is still "kinaesthetic" (2002).  The truth, of course, is that the fad for American spelling makes no sense anyway.  It is a ludicrous attempt by phonetic-fanatics (shouldn't that be "fonetik-fanatiks"?) to rationalise spelling and sound - in a language where so much of the vocabulary comes from a range of languages rather than just ne or two sources, so that sound and spelling have never had more than a passing acquaintanceship.  Just consider the old favourite, "How many ways can you pronounce the letter sequence 'ough', as in rough, cough, rough, through, etc."
And in case you think this is an off-topic rant, it is worth remembering that this is exactly why the NLP spelling strategy was invented.

This is, in fact, another author whose work always seems to strikes a bum note with me.  To be blunt, I just don't buy the cheery, chirpy, empathetic image that seems to be on offer.  What I get, instead, is the impression of someone telling me "just DO IT - let me worry about the details."  Which is not exactly "exquisite", in the NLP sense - nor even justified.

When you adopt the same body language as someone else you create the likelihood that you are engaging the same thinking and feeling circuits.
page 292

What does this mean?  Or more precisely, what does this author think it means?
How does one "create the likelihood"?  What on earth are "thinking and feeling circuits"?  Is the author saying that if I cross my arms that means that I'm engaging the same neurological pathways as anyone else who has their arms folded - regardless of whether I'm doing it because I'm bored, angry, cold, impatient, etc.?  Sweeping generalisation strikes again!

At several points in the book I felt I was in some kind of time warp that had taken me back a decade or two to the early days of NLP.
In Chapter 4 we are introduced to the standard eye accessing cues - as though they were set in concrete; and Chapter 13 is entitled Align Yourself: Neurological Levels of Change, though as is so often the case, we never actually meet the neurological levels, on the plain logical levels model.

Having said that, the author does make one small effort to be original.  It seems that we've all been mistaken in our belief that matching is a form of pacing.  According to Chapter 16, which deals with developing rapport, the author asserts that process should start with matching, then move on to pacing, and finally to leading.  No, this isn't me "translating" the author's words.  I quote:

Match, pace and lead mirrors the martial arts philosophy of going with the direction of the movement and using the energy of your partner to take them where you want them to be.
Below are some examples of matching, pacing and leading in conversation."
(page 296.)

Hmmmmm.  I wonder.

I gave the first edition of this book a four star rating and a "Qualified recommendation".  In my opinion, the author has used the additional space in this new edition to lower the quality rather than improve it - providing a real life example of the adage "less is more".  With all the other business-oriented NLP books now on the market, such as David Molden's "Managing with the Power of NLP", I can no longer find any reason to recommend this book at all.

The next problem is that whoever produced the final draft has a somewhat eccentric grasp of the English language and punctuation.  Certainly not to the extent that the book is unreadable - just enough to interrupt the flow, at irregular intervals, so that the reader is liable to lose the overall sense of what they are reading as they try to work out what the authors meant by a particular phrase or sentence.  Just the sort of this that a competent editor could have eliminated completely.

Still, these are the kind of shortcomings one would have put to one side if the text itself was sufficient gripping.  But unfortunately, in my opinion, it doesn't come anywhere near that description.

To be fair, the first six chapters of this attempt to marry up NLP with Korzybski's General Semantics promise well for the rest of the book.  In Chapter 7, however, things start to "wobble", and from Chapter 8 onwards the contents go ever more doo lally tat.
So much so that in the last few chapters (9 through 12), in which it seems that the authors are going to detail their alternative to what they call the "blame frame," we actually get little more than yet another attack on the "blame frame" itself.

The underlying reason why the book fails to achieve it's apparent purpose seems to be the incredibly inward-looking nature of much of the text.  We are repeatedly presented with highly debateable statements as though they were facts.  For example:

"You may have been told often as a child that 'There is no such thing as can't.'  Indeed, this statement may very well be true.  But it does not mean that they can either.  Usually, when can't is used, won't is more accurate."
(page 127.)

Maybe Canadians use the word differently, but I must admit I thought that when someone said they "won't" do something or other that meant they "can" do whatever it is, but they chose not to."  Which rather seems to contradict the claim that "it does not mean they can."  (Bold font used for emphasis.)

One or two examples of such tunnel vision may be merely irritating.  Unfortunately this kind of thinking is evident throughout the book.  So if you don't agree with the initial premiss, bang goes the next few pages of argumentation.

In a nutshell, this seems like a bold experiment, but one in which the flaws were so extensive that they undermined the entire project.
Not recommended.