CODES OF LOVE(爱的密码)

Mark Bryan's work is bringing families together. He was a member of Oprah Winfrey's 1999 "Change Your Life" team and a regular on her show, where he reunites parents and children. Now, counselor, educator, and cofounder of The Artist's Way Workshops, Mark Bryan offers a book that will help all of us get closer to our family members and achieve deeper intimacy by cracking the
　　Codes of Love
　　As a counselor, Bryan reconnects parents and grown children despite the pain, bitterness, and anger when the work begins. In helping families find buried closeness, Bryan has learned many lessons about what it takes to open people's hearts. He shares these lessons here -- as well as his own family story, which he weaves throughout the book, a story that poignantly illustrates how reconnection is more than possible, even after years of separation.
　　Bryan's key insight is that families often communicate love in code, using words, actions, and behaviors that not only may obscure love but sometimes get interpreted as love's opposite. Messages of affection, caring, and concern may be sent in ways that other family members read as negative judgments, efforts to control and undermine. Gaps in communication cause the messages to get lost or distorted in transit. These gaps result from generational and life differences, contrasting emotional and conversational styles, "interference" from a legacy of past conflicts, and other factors. If you can decode your family's messages of love and affection, from the past and from today, you can open the door to richer family ties.
　　Codes of Love is a guidebook that offers the basic tools for creating better relationships with parents, siblings, grown sons and daughters, spouses, even old friends -- all the loved ones in your life. Bryan explores why family affection so often gets buried or forgotten, then shows us how to recover warmth and rebuild family bonds. He gives readers the necessary tools to crack the codes of love in their own families and discover intimate connections they may not have known existed.

Synopsis
Using examples both from the author's own past and the stories of those he has helped and counselled over the years, this text aims to help the reader understand and interpret their family better, and break down the communication barrier which has built up between family members.

From Publishers Weekly
Aiming at John Bradshaw's audience of adults seeking to reconcile relationships with their original families, Bryan's self-help program draws on sophisticated psychological and spiritual concepts and the work of such thinkers as Murray Bowen and James Hillman. Bryan (The Prodigal Father; coauthor of The Artist's Way at Work) believes that individuals can enhance present relationships and self-understanding by viewing family dynamics from a mature perspective, which he calls "changing the past." He teaches that understanding and forgiveness lie in reframing difficult experiences (short of real abuse) as sources of growth and strength. Offering numerous exercises to spur the process, he urges readers to map their family's "story line," to examine "codes" of communication and behavior and to fathom the motivations of other family members. (His useful checklist for going home for the holidays is bound to attract media attention.) Personal stories enliven the text, but none are as affecting as that of the author's own estrangement from his rural West Virginia family. Recalling a time in his 20s when he was desperate for money and his father refused to help, Bryan reframes the experience as a character-building lesson about resourcefulness and self-reliance. His approach is intelligent and compassionate, although his seriousness and the intensive process he espouses may overwhelm the general self-help reader. Agent, David Vigliano.

From Library Journal
This book is not another empty self-help book but a workbook for studious, quiet thought and analysis. Bryan (The Prodigal Father) draws on his personal struggles in his efforts to create a self-guided program of reflections for the reader. The director of the Father Project in Los Angeles and the product of a troubled family, Bryan offers a lot of insight into family conflict. "All those years I had been estranged," he muses, "my father and I had been speaking different languages but trying to say the same thing." He suggests four basic steps to help you see your way home: "Remember, Reflect, Re-frame, and Reconnect." Although these ideas have been espoused countless times in self-help literature, Bryan's thoughtful exercises and writing put a new spin on reframing relationships. Trying to answer the in-depth questions in the introduction alone could take a weekend of solitary reflection. For large public, academic, and specialized collections.
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　---Susan E. Burdick, MLS, Reading, PA

Book Dimension
Height (mm) 215 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Width (mm) 135

Preface: Coming Home
Introduction: A Brand-new Past
1 From Tragedy to Comedy
2 Remember
3 Reflect
4 Re-frame
5 Reconnect
6 Codes of Love
7 Falling in Love with Your Family
8 Friends, Lovers, and the World at Large
Epilogue: Why We Do This Work
Appendix I: Going Home for the Holidays
　A Checklist
Appendix II: The Codes of Love Rules of
　Engagement
Appendix III: Teaching and Traveling with
　Codes of Love: A Guide to Starting Study
Groups
Bibliography
Index