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Prometheus Books
February 2010
On Sale: January 26, 2010
302 pages ISBN: 1591027624 EAN: 9781591027621 Paperback
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Non-Fiction | Self-Help Relationships
For over thirty years veteran clinical psychologist Ellen
Weber Libby has been helping successful, often-powerful
Clients in Washington, DC - a place known for its outsized
personalities - deal with their personal problems. One
pattern that has emerged out of some 60,000 hours of therapy
is what she calls 'the favourite child complex'. In this
groundbreaking book, she describes in intimate detail how
being the favourite child can confer both great advantages
and also significant emotional handicaps. While many of Dr
Libby's clients are successful because of their
favourite-child status - they have been brought up to
believe that they can do anything and are unafraid of
challenges - they suffer from an array of personality
problems. Behind the outward appearance of money, power,
charm, and attractive looks, they feel an intense pressure
to maintain the facade at all costs. Sometimes their ability
to tell the truth becomes shaky; sometimes intimate
relationships are elusive. In a series of chapters that
offer insightful vignettes from actual therapy sessions (the
identities of clients carefully disguised), Dr Libby
explores why parents, consciously or unconsciously, choose a
favourite child as well as the long-term effects of being
the favourite son or daughter of either or both parents. She
also discusses family situations where parents have
successfully made each of their children feel favoured and
have instilled in their children a healthy emotional
balance. She details parental skills and family processes
that increase the likelihood of this type of success and
that, most importantly, reduce the risk of the favourite
child's curse - power corrupted. Illuminating for adults
trying to come to terms with their own emotional baggage as
well as young parents seeking the best way to rear their
children, this book makes for rewarding reading.
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