Book Review: Courage to be Disliked – Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga

Book Review: Courage to be Disliked – Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga

It would be natural to interpret the title of this book as an approbation to be a terrible person because other people don’t matter.  That’s far from the message. In fact the book provides antidotes to many kinds of “terribleness,” and provides a healthy dose of tough love for people’s excuses for not living the life they want and being the people they want to be.

Many clients I see struggle with relationship problems, stress, anxiety, depression, and life transitions that Adlerian psychology would attribute to the struggle for approval of others.  On the surface, this may sound trivial or obvious, but in lived experience, it is profound:  

According to Adler, as interpreted by Kishimi, pursuit of approval:

• causes people to live a life of alienation from themselves,

• makes people feel like they are always failing,

• engages us in unfulfilling relationships that are about getting external validation,,

• casts us as anxious subordinates in many interactions, placing us at lower status,

• leads to our manipulating other people, which poisons relationships,

• traps us in our current day self-defeating patterns by keeping us focused on victim/hero narratives about the past,

• inflames interpersonal conflicts,

• inhibits self compassion and acceptance in totality that includes both strengths and weaknesses,

• unnecessarily complicates life as we intrude into others' “tasks”  or let others intrude into ours, and

• denies us our basic human need of being a contributing member of a community.

The promotional material for The Courage to be Disliked claims that reading it can be life changing, and that's possible.  Kishimi is overly dogmatic in dismissing some non-Adlerian concepts, such as the impact of trauma and its value as a therapeutic focus. Adler, a student of Sigmund Freud, broke with Freud due to differences over Freud’s emphasis on past experiences, dreams, individual experience, and the unconscious versus Adler’s belief in the primacy of individuals’ place within society, the “here and now” experience, and independent individual thought and action.

Some readers may find Kishimi’s dogmatic approach and absolutism to be off-putting, but keeping an open mind and allowing yourself to question some of your deeply held beliefs about how life works, may find you releasing distorted habits of thought and behavior that are holding you back.  

The book is constructed in an engaging and poetic way:  Its foundations in Adlerian Psychology concepts and techniques are introduced and demonstrated both through pedagogical socratic dialogue between a philosopher and a young inquirer, and in the structure of the relationship between the two.    Through  the discourse, we learn along with the inquirer about the key Adlerian concepts of the interpersonal etiology of most psychological problems, the primacy of present over past, the opportunities for peace and happiness when we strive for self acceptance rather than approval, living our own lives and doing our life tasks – and trusting other people to live and do theirs, and accepting people’s opinions about us as being unrelated to us, and living a life of being useful to our societies.

For those undeterred by the dogmatic and absolutist approach, the treasure of these useful ideas and proscriptions awaits. Some may

graduate to the sequel, The Courage to be Happy, which picks up where we left off with our two compelling protagonists. I believe the focus will have special resonance with LGBTQIA+ folks, and those doing the work to live our authentic, intentional mid-adulthood third acts.

Will reading this book change your life?  Not by itself.  Psychological change and growth requires three “pillars:”  New insight, new behavior, and new experience.  New insight is a different or expanded understanding, usually a clarifying discovery.  The Courage to be Disliked offers so many opportunities to pause, put the book down, and reevaluate how we believe life works.  For example, if we harbor the notion that praise is a valuable parenting, teaching, or therapeutic behavior, we are challenged to evaluate the downside of praise and the upside of encouragement.  (Spoiler alert:  They are not the same.)  

New behavior references a change in what we do.  It is immensely challenging to change lifelong habits with which we feel familiar and comfortable.  But if we believe, for example, in the superiority of encouragement over praise, and value our role as parents, it is imperative that we begin to try implementing the toward encouraging children.  If we don’t try changing, the insight is nothing more than an interesting idea which changes nothing.

New experience arises when we notice that something actually did change for the better.  Following the praise/encouragement example, if we notice that children become more competent, confident, and satisfied when we encourage, that reinforces the behavior of encouraging, until that habit becomes automatic and part of our makeup.

I’d encourage reading The Courage to be Disliked even simply for the pleasing experience of challenging beliefs and thinking – and possibly for stimulating some engaging conversations.  And if it sparks a change in what we do and how we experience life, wouldn’t that be better still?