There's a note of my father's inside the cover asking what is the truth, for me the point of all this is 'the truth' isn't what matters, it is the stories we tell ourselves and choose to regard as the truth which count, and perhaps that is why I enjoyed the first hundred pages because of the sense that one can read one's own life or the lives of others as a folktale or fairy story, indeed isn't it astonishing how many Cinderella's there are about and. Some bits are interesting - after reading it, I notice a lot more how couples seem to come from similar background even if the similarities aren't obvious. To this end, after demobilisation from RAF service, he enrolled as a student at University College Hospital and qualified MB, BS (Lond) in 1952.

You might enjoy the occasional smile, and you won't get bored, but you won't be rolling around on the floor laughing. Love, sex and marriage and parenthood, depression and sadness, independence and experience are just a few of the many issues explored in conversation by family therapist Robin Skynner and his former patient and comedian, John Cleese. The important posts he successfully filled were senior tutor (psychotherapy) at the Institute of Psychiatry, honorary assistant consultant psychiatrist at Bethlem Royal and Maudsley Hospital and physician in charge of the Department of Psychiatry at Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children, London. The book takes the form of a series of dialogues between Skynner, playing the role of therapist, and Cleese, who adopts the role of inquisitive lay person. Trained in Group Analysis and working as a child psychiatrist, and a family therapist, he employed group-analytic principles in that therapeutic modality.But a few years later, I was aware of some behaviour from my children (I had two by this time) that kind of rang a bell with me, but I couldn't remember why it was happening. Being pregnant probably helped as I'm very open to creating a fabulously nurturing environment for my little sproglett whilst trying to figure out how to handle my current step-mother hang ups and the fear of separate families, me and mine versus him and his. This book contains a bunch of unconventional ideas, though without solid proof of them, therefore my rating is only 3*.

As the book itself explains, change takes time to cope with and too much change can be dangerously stressful. Homosexuals are deviants and are the way they are because they missed a stage in childhood, hmm, really? In the late 1960s, he co-founded Monty Python, the comedy troupe responsible for the sketch show Monty Python's Flying Circus and the four Monty Python films: And Now for Something Completely Different, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life.He was adversely affected by the shared destruction and slaughter he was obliged to carry out, an experience that, for a variety of complex reasons, drew him to psychiatry as an eventual vocation. In the mid-1970s, Cleese and his first wife, Connie Booth, co-wrote and starred in the British sitcom Fawlty Towers. Robin Skynner will be remembered for his prolific writing; he authored One Flesh: Separate Persons, Principles of Family and Marital Psychotherapy (1976), Explorations with Families: Group-Analysis and Family Therapy (1987), Institutes and How to Survive Them: Mental Health Training and Consultation (1989), Family Matters (1995), Families and How to Survive Them (1975), and Life and How to Survive It. The psychology of people functioning (or rather, not) as families is explored and explained by Robin Skynner in conversations with John Cleese.

The dialogue aims to lay out what Cleese learnt and what Skynner, I guess, hoped to convey to his patients about the dynamics of the human mind and family life in the course of therapy. One notices that while they are opening and accepting when it suits them they are strict and prescriptive on other issues like spare the rod and spoil the child. There are some great ideas in here still, and the dialogue format is very engaging and easy to read, but reading it from thirty-ish years later, be prepared to discard a lot as you go. It is still highly enjoyable though, containing both insights as well as a lot of fun passages and comments.Take it with a pinch of salt - but if you ever wanted to know why some families get along and others don't, in broad terms, I'd recommend this book highly. And notice the parts you most strongly disagree with - what might be behind the screen that's making you act that way?

Skynner opens with a classic folk tale motive - his great uncle relating how Skynner's mother said that her son would either be a genius or end up in the madhouse. But if you ever wanted to know why some families get along and others don't, in broad terms, I'd recommend this book highly. Families and How to Survive Them may be said to have arisen from two sources – an earlier book, One Flesh, Separate Persons: Principles of Family and Marital Therapy (1976) by Skynner, and work carried out by Skynner at the Institute of Family Therapy in London in the 1970s. Even now, as an empty-nester, I can see a lot of value in this for self-help, and figuring out how people tick and why some are easier to get along with than others - quite apart from their different personality preferences. Skynner admits he fulfilled the prophecy by entering the madhouse, but through the staff door, this is the kind of thing I so much enjoyed in reading Herodotus.I remember reading this book years ago and finding the discussions of how and why we replicate family relationships and how we are drawn to people hiding the same problems as ourselves fascinating. He was a founder of the Group-Analytic Practice and of the Institute of Group-Analysis, and a founder and first chairman of the Institute of Family Therapy, London. Anyone interested in family dynamics can benefit from the wisdom presented in totally accessible manner.