I Shop Therefore I Am: Compulsive Buying and the Search for Self
Dr. Benson and her colleagues have given us the first serious, scholarly, comprehensive (and fascinating) study of compulsive buying, its root causes, accompanying disorders, and treatment approaches. (Joseph A. Califano, Jr.)Shopping, often ridiculed, pathologized as an obsession and a perversion, and associated with frivolous women, has now been given serious, balanced, and substantive treatment. Using current contributions from infant research, motivational systems theory, self psychology, and relational psychoanalytic perspectives, Dr. Benson and her contributors add to the literature on shopping by indicating its self-sustaining and self-enhancing aspects. Richly illustrating all aspects of the shopping experience, this book addresses the multitude of psychological issues that shopping can encompass and attempt to negotiate. (Frank M. Lachmann and Beatrice Beebe)April Benson's I Shop, Therefore I Am: Compulsive Buying & the Search for Self is a comprehensive and timely examination of an understudied but emerging public health problem. Our understanding of compulsive shopping, along with the other impulse control disorders, is rapidly changing, and this book will surely facilitate a reexamination and reconceptualization. Including material on shopping as a drug; gender and self image issues; psychiatric assessment; psychopharmacology; and psychodynamic, couples, and self-help approaches, this book is a tour de force... (Eric Hollander)This is a substantive, impressive, and important book that should be read by every clinician in practice. It is the first work ever to attempt—and largely succeed at—a serious, comprehensive examination of the nature of compulsive or addictive shopping, spending, and buying, problems now astonishingly widespread, usually denied, and nearly always concealed. It is a work that is both flawed and inspired, at once infuriating, stimulating, annoying, and exhilarating. It is somewhat wrong at times; at other times, dead right. Fortunately, it is more often the latter. In the end, this work is a significant and valuable contribution to healing in the new century. (Jerrold Mundis)Intellectually and clinically substantial, I Shop, Therefore I Am: Compulsive Buying & the Search for Self is so timely it ought to be on bookshelves everywhere, from the consulting room to the training institute. Given the remarkable explosion of e-commerce, Benson's focus on this subject seems almost prescient. It is impossible to imagine any therapist who doesn't come across the problem of compulsive buying, and equally impossible to imagine most clinicians having any idea about how to handle it.Dr. Benson has courage to take on this much disparaged, yet central aspect of everyday life... (Ron Taffel)Intellectually and clinically substantial,I Shop, Therefore I Am: Compulsive Buying & the Search for Selfis so timely it ought to be on bookshelves everywhere, from the consulting room to the training institute. Given the remarkable explosion of e-commerce, Benson's focus on this subject seems almost prescient. It is impossible to imagine any therapist who doesn't come across the problem of compulsive buying, and equally impossible to imagine most clinicians having any idea about how to handle it. Dr. Benson has courage to take on this much disparaged, yet central aspect of everyday life. (Ron Taffel)April Benson'sI Shop, Therefore I Am: Compulsive Buying & the Search for Selfis a comprehensive and timely examination of an understudied but emerging public health problem. Our understanding of compulsive shopping, along with the other impulse control disorders, is rapidly changing, and this book will surely facilitate a reexamination and reconceptualization. Including material on shopping as a drug; gender and self image issues; psychiatric assessment; psychopharmacology; and psychodynamic, couples, and self-help approaches, this book is a tour de force. (Eric Hollander)