Why Him? Why Her?: Understanding Your Personality Type and Finding the Perfect Match by Helen Fisher
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
A self help book about love. Takes the view that neurochemicals formulate the basis for each individual’s personality type. Basic formulas of self help books follow a two step pattern. 1) establish categorical understanding. 2) apply categories to the world. This book does exactly that. Proof of this is the author’s work and statistical data she has from a match making website she consulted with. It’s possible to see people’s primary behaviors calibrated to a predominance with certain neurochemicals in their brain. But to reduce people to a mechanical agency based literally on chemistry to help us find chemistry? The packaging she puts this through appears to be very simple, straightforward and properly anecdotal. But like many self help books, there is one way to view the world (through the book) but there are also a myriad other ways to view the world. In some ways this book presents an interesting look at people, but it’s one that is perhaps too stiff to really live up to its promises. It cuts out much of the other information about why anyone and why not anyone else? If there were really as she says, 16 types, (32) given the sexes (even more given sexualities), then relationships as an art devolves into a numbers game. And at that level, we might as well all just jump into speed dating venues, in which case a guide like this doesn’t really guide us at all. In a strange way, you could even argue that this book is in some ways, advertising for the website.
But then, isn’t that always what happens with expertise, today? Experts need to make a living too. Why not do so with what they are an expert of?
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