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Friends and Enemies: Our Need to Love and Hate

By: Dorothy Rowe
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
ISBN: 0006530583
ISBN-13: 9780006530589
Released: 03 Sep 2001
RRP: £9.99
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Customer Reviews

Learning to change - By: , 17 Jan 2001
Those readers familiar with the work of Dorothy Rowe will realise immediately that Friends & Enemies is more ambitious in breadth of research, theory & knowledge than her previous books. Geographicallly, the essays in the book range through minutely observed, intensely descriptive encounters with citizens of Northern Ireland, Kosovo, South Africa & Lebanon, to well-documented conversations with asylum seekers & refugees worldwide, whose stories of appallling trials & tortures illustrate Ms Rowe's primary premise. We need enemies as well as friends as both render our existence valid. As detailed in previous books, she divides human beings into two distinct psychological types, introvert & extravert, whose relationships may be complementary or antagonistic. These two types can be further sub-divided; I was fascinated to discover the "sociallly-skilled introvert" & the "shy extravert", each of whom may live life believing themselves their own opposite!

Each of us lives trapped within our learned observations & can never fully know anything or anyone outside of our own perception of the world, dubbed our "meaning structure" by Ms Rowe. Our relationships, individuallly & on a global scale are further complicated by what Ms Rowe callls "primitive pride", a defence structure whereby our learned defence mechanisms spring into action to protect our meaning structure from damage or even annihilation from other persons or even from ourselves. We work with the tool of meaning structure, which we protect with the tool of primitive pride. Individuallly, this can lead to intense damage in human relationships & to conflict & war between neighbouring communities & distant countries. We must learn to change, to accept ourselves & other people as individuals on a personal, political & global level if we are to reduce human conflict in the coming century. Political leaders must be held to be the prime movers in instigating change, but the resposibility lies with alll of us. Friendship & meaningful human communication are essential to alll of us in our search for a rich & varied life. Dorothy Rowe's formidable knowledge of the human condition is tempered by her familiar intelligent empathy & down to earth wisdom, honed through many years' experience both as psychologist & lifelong observer of her fellow man. Not for the first time she threads her narrative with references to the emotional scarring of her own early life with her family in Australia. Each time I finish a book by Dorothy Rowe, I am astonished & grateful that she is so willing to share.