THE TABOO AGAINST BEING YOUR OWN BEST FRIEND (1996): The Taboo deals with the adverse effects of social, cultural, and psychological conditioning, which program people into giving everyone else the benefit of the doubt, but their own selves. Those so inclined worry more about what other people think and feel about them than what they think and feel about themselves. They often display a compulsive need to please others, often at the expense of meeting their own basic needs. Dr. Fisher sees this as leading to an inevitable conclusion: one becomes one’s own worst enemy. The result is self-contempt and depression, as the individual has failed to learn how to be their own best friend. People of such propensity, Dr. Fisher has discovered, live in a virtual prison of mind, captive to someone else’s agenda, and a card-carrying member of a victim mentality. This limits their choices, consumes their energy, clouds their focus, and ultimately commits them to a self-imposed cage that limits their happiness and well being. The Taboo addresses this issue, not in a by-the-numbers-how-to-deal-with-aggression-disappointment-and-pain, but in a no nonsense common sense story telling approach of poignant case studies. These are from the files of Dr. Fisher’s industrial counseling and consulting work. He has dealt with clients who range from CEOs to day laborers, from corporate professionals to independent entrepreneurs. From these intimate observations, he has gleaned insightful strategies for one becoming more self-aware, self-accepting, and self-asserting in the course of their daily life. This is not a how-to book nor a self-help book in the style of the genre, but a take charge book in the style of recognizing one’s situation, accepting it, and taking full responsibility for it. In short, this is a book about making choices and developing one’s own roadmap based on such choices. The benefit is to gain control of one’s life, and in that control to find purposeful satisfaction. Dr. Fisher concludes that it takes courage to embrace The Taboo Against Being Your Own Best Friend, a courage, which he believes everyone possesses, but doesn’t necessarily know. What this book is, he says in the final analysis, might be considered an introduction to a new friend, a friend who walks with you every day, only to be ignored most of the time. Alas, hopefully, no longer!

READERS’ COMMENTS

Eric Michael Rodts, marketing executive, Honeywell, Inc.: “My favorite line of the year comes from the pages of The Taboo. ‘To attempt to do for others what they best do for themselves is to weaken their resolve and diminish them as persons.’ The same holds true of us. Bingo! Amen! Oh yeah!”

James Wright, senior columnist, The Dallas Morning News: “Churchill once had a great line about nothing being as powerful as the simple declarative English sentence. Dr. Fisher is one of the few folks writing in this genre who knows what he meant. The taboo is full of these simple looking, but profound, and from a marketing angle, readable sentences, such as: ‘we are not happy campers. We have lost our moral compass.’”

E. Buddy Davis, Director of Human Resources, Johnny Ruth Clarke Health Centers: “I confess I am a purposeful reader. I have little time to read simply for pleasure. What I look for in a book is guidance through the stormy jungle of everyday life to arrive a better person and effective in my profession. I don’t look so much for solutions as for help in defining my problems. The Taboo Against Being Your Own Best Friend is a bonus. It gave me such help, while it convinced me that I’m a pretty nice guy as well.”

Dr. Billy G. Gunter, Professor of Sociology, University of South Florida: “Fisher bares his soul in this book, and in doing so, exposes mine to me. The message here is not to celebrate self-indulgence, but to provide a strategy for penetrating it in order to arrive at self-acceptance. That compound word is so easy to say, ‘self-acceptance,’ yet so difficult to realize. Be advised, Fisher offers no detours on this important journey.”

Dr. Francis Xavier Pesuth, retired executive: “The flavor of this study is such that the subject matter is retained, after the fact. The coverage shows a great deal of research with a strong but familiar style. Excellent word pictures, but I still don’t know who Howard Stern is!”