The colleagues, students, and learners who contributed to the final production of this manuscript and the development of systematic assertive therapy as a body of clinical and practical knowledge have my sincere thanks for letting me describe our experiences together.
In particular, I would like to thank the following persons for their constructive criticism, advice, and review of the manuscript: Ms. Susan F. Levine, M.S.W., my close colleague at Los Angeles County Mental Health, for her critical appraisal of each portion of the manuscript as it was written from a clinical, yet warm and human viewpoint, and for her gutsy and sparkling ways of teaching systematic assertiveness even after many classes and workshops; Dr. Irving M. Maltzman, Chairman of the Department of Psychology, University of California at Los Angeles, for reading early drafts which he prompted me to expand into book form, and for his review of the first technical draft; Mr. Fromme Fred Sherman, M.S., my old Peace Corps colleague, for reviewing the first draft and making valuable suggestions for improving it, as well as for his quick mind and wit when teaching assertive workshops and later, for his delightful renditions of Tevye after eight hours of work; Dr. Zev Wanderer, Director of the Center for Behavior Therapy, Beverly Hills, California, for his advice, counsel, and critique of the therapy techniques described in the manuscript and his encouragement to publish them. Although these reviewers contributed to the final content and writing of the manuscript, I myself must take full responsibility for any errors or inaccuracies that remain.
I also want to thank Nancy Stacy and Jennifer Patten Smith, those assertive typist-editors who insured that what I wrote made sense; thanks are especially due to Jennifer, who could always tell when what I had in mind wasn’t coming out on paper.
Very special thanks are due to Ms. Joyce Engelson, Executive Editor at The Dial Press, New York; I thank that exceptionally literary drill sergeant whose hard work and tender loving care with this manuscript made a significant difference.
Contents
ONE
Our inherited survival responses; coping with other people by fight, flight, or verbal assertiveness
Problems other people give us: is conflict inevitable?
Our primitive survival behaviors: how we become so aggressive or tend to avoid other people.
Our verbal problem-solving ability: the unique difference between us and other animal species.
How learning to feel anxious, ignorant, and guilty as children can make us passive, manipulable, and nonassertive as adults. Can parents
control
their children’s behavior
without
making them feel anxious, ignorant, or guilty?
TWO
Our prime assertive human right—how other people violate it
How we are manipulated into doing what others want.
How we can stop being manipulated by other people.
The manipulator’s basic tool: external structure. Need there be rules to cover every situation?
Three ways to simplify how you look at your relationship with anyone else: commercial, authority, and equal interactions.
Is being assertive immoral or illegal?
THREE
Our everyday assertive rights—the common ways other people manipulate us
A
SSERTIVE
R
IGHT
II: You have the right to offer no reasons or excuses for justifying your behavior.
A
SSERTIVE
R
IGHT
IV: You have the right to change your mind.
A
SSERTIVE
R
IGHT
V: You have the right to make mistakes—and be responsible for them.
A
SSERTIVE
R
IGHT
VI: You have the right to say, “I don’t know.”
A
SSERTIVE
R
IGHT
VIII: You have the right to be illogical in making decisions.
A
SSERTIVE
R
IGHT
IX: You have the right to say, “I don’t understand.”
A
SSERTIVE
R
IGHT
X: You have the right to say, “I don’t care.”
FOUR
The first thing to learn in being assertive: persistence
Assertive rights and assertive behavior: Both are important in living assertively.
Substituting verbal persistence for silent passivity.
The systematic skill of B
ROKEN
R
ECORD
.
Habit: How people talk you into doing what they want.
Practical goals in being assertive: W
ORKABLE
C
OMPROMISE
, keeping your self-respect, and the limits of being assertive.
FIVE
Assertive social conversation and communication
Why are we often tongue-tied?
The conversational skills of following up F
REE
I
NFORMATION
and S
ELF
-D
ISCLOSURE
.
Disclosing your own worries to other people: One way to stop manipulation.
Eye-to-eye contact: An important part of assertive behavior.
SIX
Assertively coping with the great manipulator: criticism
Nonassertive critics: How they manipulate you into doing what they want.
The systematic skill of F
OGGING
.
Agreeing with critical truths and still doing what you want.
Agreeing in principle with logical criticism and still doing what you want.
Agreeing with the odds that you will fail and still doing what you want.
The systematic skill of N
EGATIVE
A
SSERTION
.
Asserting your negative points: What you can do when you are 100 per cent in error.
Coping with compliments or criticism: They are no different when you are assertive.
SEVEN
Prompting people you care about to be more assertive and less manipulative toward you
Assertively inquiring about yourself and what you do: How this eliminates right and wrong statements used to control your behavior.
The systematic skill of N
EGATIVE
I
NQUIRY
.
Prompting criticism: How it can reduce manipulation.
Prompting criticism about your work performance: How this can lead to a promotion.
Prompting criticism about yourself: How this can lead to a closer relationship with people you care for.
EIGHT
Everyday commercial situations—assertively coping where money is involved
Putting the systematic skills together to cope with typical commercial conflicts: Door-to-door salesmen. Returning defective merchandise. Angry customers. Getting defective merchandise fixed. Dealing with the public. Getting repairs or refunds from auto dealers. Problems in getting and giving professional medical treatment.
NINE
Everyday authority situations—assertively coping with supervision or expertise
Using systematic skills to assert yourself in authority interactions: Between employee and supervisor. In a job or graduate school interview. Choosing between job offers. Speaking to an audience or presenting a report. Between parents and children. Between teachers and students. With teen-agers.
TEN
Everyday equal relationships—working out compromises or just saying “No”
Using assertive skills to cope with people who are equal to you, but not as close as some: Lending out your car. Imposing neighbors. Friends who want a business loan. Interfering parents. Dates and lovers who manipulate you.
ELEVEN
Really close equal relationships—sex and assertion
Asserting your sexual wants and your other wants: the wants are different, the assertive behavior is the same.
Fear and Anger: the emotional bases of sexual difficulties.
The Anxiety Model, the Anger Model, and the Mixed Model: treatment modes for sexual problems.
Learned sexual problems and how they can be treated with re-learning.
How being nonassertively passive or manipulative can contribute to sexual difficulties.
How being assertive can help with changing your sexual lifestyle: Hidden anxiety agendas about change. Compromises on different sexual wants. Assertively prompting your partner to learn new ways with you to overcome a routine sex life or a routine lifestyle.
Anxiety, passivity, and lack of sexual foreplay. Decrease in sexual frequency: a sign of withdrawal of close contact with a mate, in and out of bed.
Do you want to assert yourself or do you want to control other people?
What happens to society if a lot of us become more assertive and less manipulable?
Glossary of Systematic Assertive Skills
Table of Dialogues
#1 Carlo and the supermarket clerk.
#2 Learning how to say “No,” persistently.
#3 Pete and Jean model the social conversation skills of FREE INFORMATION and SELF-DISCLOSURE.
#4 A beginning practice exercise using FOGGING to cope with criticism.
#5 A beginning practice exercise using NEGATIVE INQUIRY to cope with criticism.
#6 Bobbie uses NEGATIVE INQUIRY to cope with a neighbor’s manipulation.
#7 Prompting criticism of your work to get a raise.
#8 Coping with a door-to-door salesman.
#9 Anne returns a pair of defective boots to a large department store.
#10 Andy copes with an angry customer complaining about the delivery of defective merchandise.
#11 Mr. and Mrs. Heath assertively cope with an evasive furniture store owner.
#12 Dorothy copes with the public in her civil service job.
#13 Arnold gets his brakes fixed.
#14 Jack gets a refund of $1,800 from a used-car dealer.
#15 Mary and Abel assertively cope with difficulties in the physician-patient relationship.
#16 Mike stops being the elastic in a poor system of overtime coverage at work.
#17 Sam tells his employee of an increase in workload.
#18 Betty copes with a boss who meddles in her personal life.
#19 Milt and Dee practice to take graduate school and job interviews assertively.
#20 Carl copes with a manipulative movie producer.
#21 Susan demonstrates how to deal with criticism of her public-speaking ability.
#22 Ron handles digressive, irrelevant, pertinent, and critical comments during the presentation of a report
#23 Parents and teachers assertively deal with the complaints of small children.
#24 Scotty prompts his teen-age daughter to be responsible for her own behavior.
#25 Saying “No” to a friend when he wants to borrow your car.
#26 Bobbie copes with a neighbor who wants her to cut down her gum trees.
#27 Alan and a good friend who asks for a business loan.
#28 Sandy gradually changes the relationship between herself and her parents from an authoritarian one to an interaction between equals.
#29 Paul finally stops his father from interfering with his marriage and his work.
#30 Dana and Beth cope with friendly manipulation from their sexual partners, and many a young co-ed learns how to say “No.”
#31 A husband (or wife) assertively tells his (or her) mate that their sex life is routine and seeks some change.
#32 A wife tells her husband that she wants to get a job.
#33 A wife tells her mate that she wants more foreplay in sex.
#34 A previously manipulated wife (or husband) assertively prompts her (or his) mate to say what is wrong about their marriage so both of them can work on it.