书名：What You Can Change and What You Can't:The Complete Guide to Successful Self-Improvement认识自己，接纳自己

作者：Martin E. P Seligman
出版社名称：Vintage Books USA
出版时间：2007
语种：英文 
ISBN：9781400078400
商品尺寸：13.2 x 1.9 x 20.3 cm
包装：平装
页数：336

每个人都是不完美的，但这并不影响人们与家人、朋友、同事的生活与沟通。我们很强大，可以扮演不同的角色，快乐的、悲伤的、愤怒的、贪婪的、自私的，所有的这些都是为了一点点的慰藉与满足。如果有人是完美的，那他就是幸福的。可是，大多数人都不知道自己，因为我们的言行都不属于我们自己。

本书What You Can Change and What You Can't:The Complete Guide to Successful Self-Improvement《认识自己，接纳自己》是积极心理学之父、美国心理协会主席马丁•塞利格曼（Martin E. P Seligman）的著作，也是其“幸福科学四部曲”的第2部。塞利格曼用他自己的幸福观，让我们更真实地认识自己，从而更坦诚地接纳自己！

媒体评论：
“塞利格曼的书是新世纪人类行为的指南。看过他的书的人，不管是门外汉还是专业人士都会受惠。这本书不仅包含了具体的自我评估工具，而且语言生动、风趣，道出了活出真我的涵义。”——希斯赞特米哈伊，心流之父

“心理学终于认真地研究了‘幸福’。塞利格曼博士送给我们一盏明灯，指引我们不断找寻多姿多彩的生活。”——丹尼尔·戈尔曼，情商之父

“由本世纪有创意、有影响力的心理学家写成的作品。他在幸福的本质上，阐述了不少精辟的科学见解及个人反思。”——史蒂芬·平克，畅销书《语言本能》的作者

In the climate of self-improvement that pervades our culture, there is an overwhelming amount of information about treatments for everything from alcohol abuse to sexual dysfunction. Much of this information is exaggerated if not wholly inaccurate. As a result, people who try to change their own troubling conditions often experience the frustration of mixed success, success followed by a relapse, or outright failure.
To address this confusion, Martin Seligman has meticulously analyzed the most authoritative scientific research on treatments for alcoholism, anxiety, weight loss, anger, depression, and a range of phobias and obsessions to discover what is the most effective way to address each condition. He frankly reports what does not work, and pinpoints the techniques and therapies that work best for each condition, discussing why they work and how you can use them to make long lasting change. Inside you’ll discover the four natural healing factors for recovering from alcoholism; the vital difference between overeating and being overweight; the four therapies that work for depression, the pros and cons of anger—and much more.
Wise, direct, and very useful, What You Can Change and What You Can’t will help anyone who seeks to change.

Review
"So much more sensible and lucid than most self-help gurus constantly rewards anyone interested in individual psychology. Absolutely splendid." --Booklist

"Extremely well-written. . . . Throughout, Seligman uses outcome studies to identify what works in making change." --Library Journal

"Enlightening. . . . Seligman's observations and theories are positive, realistic and sound." --Publishers Weekly

What You Can Change and What You Can't:The Complete Guide to Successful Self-Improvement《认识自己，接纳自己》将颠覆你以往深以为是的观点。节食能达到减肥的效果吗？戒烟、戒酒能成功吗？你从这本书中可以清楚地知道自己哪些方面是可以改变的，而哪些方面却无法改变，是自己必须接受的。塞利格曼博士从改变的可能性和生物局限性出发，帮助你把有限的时间和精力集中在那些能够改变的特性上，并在此基础上找到一条自我提升的有效途径！
马丁•塞利格曼，从“抑郁专家”到“积极心理学之父”，从“习得性无助”中走出来，不再只关注人性黑暗、脆弱与痛苦的一面。他发出了“积极心理学”的召唤——帮助普通人增加幸福感。塞利格曼博士在美国心理学界地位尊崇，他是当代认知心理治疗的创始人之一。他曾获得美国心理协会的两大奖项——威廉詹姆斯奖及詹姆斯卡特尔奖。他曾登上《纽约时报》、《时代周刊》、《新闻周刊》等众多流行杂志。他的著作有超过20本，译成多种语言，并畅销全球。

Martin E.P. Seligman, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and a past president of the American Psychological Association, is a leading motivational expert and an authority on learned helplessness. His many books include Authentic Happiness and The Optimistic Child. Dr. Seligman's research has been supported by the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute on Aging, the National Science Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation.

Two WORLDVIEWS are in collision. On the one hand, this is the age of psychotherapy and the age of self-improvement. Millions are struggling to change: We diet, we jog, we meditate. We adopt new modes of thought to counteract our depressions. We practice relaxation to curtail stress. We exercise to expand our memory and to quadruple our reading speed. We adopt draconian regimes to give up smoking. We raise our little boys and girls to androgyny. We come out of the closet or we try to become heterosexual. We seek to lose our taste for alcohol. We seek more meaning in life. We try to extend our life span.

Sometimes It works. But distressingly often, self-improvement and psychotherapy fail. The cost is enormous. We think we are worthless. We feel guilty and ashamed. We believe we have no willpower and that we are failures. We give up trying to change.
Trudy,like tens of millions of Americans, is desperate because she believes, quite incorrectly, that she is a failure. She finds herself even worse off after ten years of trying everything to lose weight.
Trudy weighed 175 pounds when she graduated from Brown a decade ago. Four times since, she has slimmed to under 125: Weight Watchers, Nutri-System, six months under the care of a private behavior therapist, and, fast year, Optifast. With each regime the weight came off quickly, if not painlessly. Each time the fat returned, faster and more of it. Trudy now weighs 195 and has given up.
In its faith that we can change anything, the self-improvement movement expects Trudy to succeed in her fight against fat, even though she is such an obvious loser in the weight game. On the other hand, there is a view that expects Trudy to fail. For this is not only the age of self-improvement and therapy, this is the age of biological psychiatry. The human genome will be nearly mapped before the millennium is over. The brain systems underlying sex, hearing, memory, left-handed-ness, and sadness are now known. Psychoactive drugs—external agents—quiet our fears, relieve our blues, bring us bliss, dampen our mania, and dissolve our delusions more effectively than we can on our own. Our very personality—our intelligence and musical talent, even our religiousness, our conscience (or its absence), our politics, and our exuberance—turns out to be more the product of our genes than almost anyone would have believed a decade ago. Identical twins reared apart are uncannily similar in all these traits, almost as similar as they are for height and weight. The underlying message of the age of biological psychiatry is that our biology frequently makes changing, in spite of all our efforts, impossible.
But the view that all is genetic and biochemical and therefore cannot change is also very often wrong. Many individuals surpass their IQs, fail to “respond” to drugs, make sweeping changes in their lives, live on when their cancer is “terminal,” or defy the hormones and brain circuitry that “dictate” lust or femininity or memory loss.
Clay is one of many who ignored the conventional wisdom that his problem was “biological” and found just the right psychotherapy, which worked quickly and permanently.