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A Critique of "Inner Medicine"

I first read Inner Medicine not long after James wrote it, many years ago, and I remember thinking at the time that it contained some interesting and quite unique ideas. I still retain that impression after all this time and, after another reading, I have formed my thoughts on the work into some more coherent notes and criticisms. These fall broadly into two categories, which I will outline below under the headings of 'Content' and 'Execution'.

Content

The content of the book revolves around the concept that all elements of the human psyche revolve around basic building blocks referred to as 'The Virtues'. It is a simple, logical and appealing theory, laid out with examples and exercises designed to help the reader along a path of self-improvement. In many ways, this is far better than many of the myriad of self-help books on the market which are often opaque, over-complicated and, ultimately, useless to most people in the long run. I instinctively like the concepts and believe they could be useful to many. My only real criticism in this area is that links to other works to back up the author's assertions with evidence, such as how the virtues relate to ideas in other philosophies and religions, would strengthen his arguments and make the work more compelling. However, most of the issues with this book come under my second heading...

Execution

In essence, the chief problem with this book is that there is not enough depth; basic concepts are skimmed over too rapidly and some things are not really explained in any detail. For example: there is a line in Chapter 7 which reads "Whenever we reject a part of ourselves, it falls into semi-consciousness." The concept of "semi-consciousness" in this context could do with more explanation as, to any casual reader, this is a term with ambiguous meaning - I myself am still not entirely sure what the author means by it.

Another example can be found in Chapter 37, where personality archetypes are mentioned. How these relate to the virtues and what they are would be a very useful addition to the book. This chapter could also benefit from better formatting - it is presented as an entire block, where it would read more fluidly were it to be broken down into paragraphs of two or three sentences, which leads me onto other structural issues with the book.

The exercises, currently given chapters of their own, would be better embedded into chapters (perhaps labelled as Exercise A, B, C etc.) to better illustrate the concepts being explained, with the summaries also being part of the same chapter. Also, some graphics would be of help in places, such as in Chapter 4 where a visual of relationships between virtues would be of considerable benefit. Additionally, there are areas which examples from the author's own experience would really bring the work to life, the most obvious of these being in summaries for the exercises from chapters 20 through 22.

Summary

In conclusion, I have found Inner Medicine to be an interesting and useful short book which does need some work. Unfortunately, it reads more like an outline for a book than a finished book, but I would absolutely love to see the finished book should James decide to complete it! As he says in the book, he is but "another student on the path" and I am sure that, should he revisit his work, the results would be outstanding.



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