Make the Leap: A Practical Guide to Breaking the Patterns That Hold You Back

By Farrell Silverberg

Book Overview

A landmark, paradigm-shifting, life-improving tool, Make the Leap does for the idea of patterns what Gail Sheehy's book did for passages. In clear, no-nonsense language, longtime and leading psychoanalyst and teacher Farrell Silverberg brilliantly distills the key psychoanalytic principles about why people fall into the rut of unproductive patterns. And he presents a totally original yet simple and accessible step-by-step plan for how to break these patterns, once and for all. Drawing on many of the author's riveting, illuminative cases in his over twenty-five years of experience as a practicing analyst, Silverberg offers a supremely effective and revolutionary tool--one that will help turn all readers who feel they have potential but can't make the leap to living up to it into people who are in charge of their lives and fulfilling their potential.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1569244189
• ISBN13: 9781569244180
• Release Date: May 2005
• Publisher: Marlowe & Company
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 1.0" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

Professionals and lay people "Leap"for Joy!

It was an inspiration and pleasure to read Dr. Farrell Silverberg's Make the Leap on both a professional and personal level. Dr. Silverberg uses down to earth, accessible language to convey complex psychological concepts and practical strategies for altering self-defeating patterns in work and relationships. As a private practice psychologist, I will enthusiastically recommend his book and techniques to my own clients struggling with repetitive and unwanted patterns.

Easy-to-understand guide to breaking destructive patterns

As the subtitle to this book suggests, Make the Leap is a truly practical guide to breaking the destructive patterns which occur in our lives. To this end, author Farrell Silverberg, a psychoanalyst, introduces the SUBGAP method, which involves a 4-step process: 1) Seeing your pattern, 2) Understanding your pattern, 3) Breaking your pattern, and 4) Guarding Against Patterns in the future. Using a clear, simple writing style, Silverberg breaks down each of these steps to make them completely assessible to the average reader. Various techniques are suggested to facilitate each step in the SUBGAP process. For example, in order to recognize your pattern, Silverberg explains how to use both top-down and bottom-up analysis strategies. Similarly, once you are ready to break your pattern, Silverberg offers a choice of several different ways to do this. Plenty of real-person examples illustrate Silverberg's points; these add interest as well as increase comprehension of the SUBGAP method. The book also particularly addresses breaking patterns in two specific areas, work and love, and finally, Silverberg shares how he overcame a destructive pattern in his own life. Given that this book is so straightforward, some readers might find it to be TOO simplistic. Indeed, much of the conclusions contained in the book could alternatively be dervived from common sense and basic problem-solving as well as past self-help works (Bill O'Hanlon's Do One Thing Different comes to mind). Despite this, I believe that this book could still be useful to many, as Silverberg's fundamental approach might just right for someone who has been unable to see, understand, or break a damaging pattern on their own. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone looking for assistance in overcoming unproductive patterns and making positive life changes.