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Ichiro Kishimi: The Courage to Be Disliked: How to Free Yourself, Change your Life and Achieve Real Happiness (2019) 4 stars

Review of 'The Courage to Be Disliked: How to Free Yourself, Change your Life and Achieve Real Happiness' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

If you attack trauma, PTSD, self-harm and say it doesn't exist, that it is for attention and that it is all rather silly and all you excuse it with is the "I'm a philosopher, so I approach psychology from a philosophical standpoint", then you need to add some more words to your claims.

Individual psychology, as the philosopher constantly leans up against, excuses itself by not being that well-known now due to "if the psychology is well-known, the person behind it ceases to exist" kind of deal. It all sounds like pseudoscience, backing up with little but anecdotal examples. The claims are not testiable.

The book should have just gone away with the pretense of being about psychology, and rather be more philosophical in how to approach life and certain situations.

When you peel away that constant "I am right, you are wrong" narration, the book has some decent ideas but you really have to pull the rug away from the narrator and approach the entire book with a great deal of skepticisim, in order to get through it - which was exhausting to me.