The writing is pleasant enough, but the disorganized hops across time muddle the clarity of the story’s chronology. Her story did not feel cohesive at all and the constant jumping around between several decades gave me whiplash. In How to Know a Person, Brooks sets out to help us do better, posing questions that are essential for all of us: If you want to know a person, what kind of attention should you cast on them? I came across the skills and principles of DBT quite accidentally five years ago when I was going through an emotionally challenging time. Are you having a hard time making romantic relationships work because you’re afraid your partner will leave?

This means you can effectively regulate intense emotions and reactions without compromising on the quality of life you wish to lead. It was very interesting to read of a therapist who has suffered from the same challenges that her patients are experiencing.

I consider this memoir such a courageous accomplishment from a well-known clinician scientist in the field of Psychology. He was thrilled, until I told him I wanted to give the talk in one of the large rooms, because I knew it would draw a big audience. Everything in Marsha Linehan's life and remarkable memoir uncovers the dark--the hell of the unhappy self and the hell of inadequate help--and brings us into the light, with humor and detail in describing her grappling and growth, and her courage and vision of how to create a treatment for even the most unhappy of us. I thought that a book by the creator of dialectical behavior therapy would be packed full of insights and information about the therapy and its applications.

I would describe its impact on suicidal people, what other conditions it was proving to be beneficial for, and so on. As someone whose outlook on life is completely different, it was a chore for me to read about her spiritual beliefs (Catholicism and Zen). The truth is that most psychotherapists of all disciplines graduate and get licensed without ever having received the kind of training and supervision that is required to produce a competent therapist. She says, "You can't think yourself into new ways of acting; you can only act yourself into new ways of thinking. Mother Teresa had a beautiful phrase that captures some of this: “Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.Often, she would refer to others experiences to tell parts of the process, such as ‘I will let him explain’, so then, her opinion from others was also there for us to see. As David Brooks observes, “There is one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community organization, or society: the ability to see someone else deeply and make them feel seen—to accurately know another person, to let them feel valued, heard, and understood. Large sections of her chapters were just verbatim quotes from people in her life whom she would quote in full but not elaborate on afterwards.