Dianne Pita's Self Help Book

Clinical psychologist Dianne Doyle Pita's The "Dumbo" Dilemma (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1993) is another addition to the bookstore shelf labeled "Psychology (Self-Help)." The list of companion tomes by myriad pastors, philosophers, "socio-theologians," and various other therapists, counsellors, psychologists, and psychiatrists is virtually infinite, and new additions appear more often than one cares to count. It adds no new dimension to the body of literature concerned for the psycho-spiritual well-being of humanity, which includes, for example, Robert Schuller's The Power of Positive Thinking and its various sequelae. Its only apparent uniqueness is to be found in its analogy of the "life" of the fictional "Dumbo" to the lives of the readers who are the target audience.

Pita's use of the Dumbo analogy unabashedly stems from the author's intense animosity toward the story, as characterized by her opening line: "I never liked the story of Dumbo, and I'm not the only one" (p. 11). Her book is supposed to assist the reader to overcome his or her struggle to locate one's "niche in life." The nagging ques

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Category: Psychology - D