Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists?

2006144••••Book Review

BOOK REVIEW

Too soon old, too late smart

Gordon Livingstone
Sydney: Hodder, 2005
ISBN 07336 19924, pp. 169, Softcover $22.95.

This is one wise man’s view on life and how it is best lived. I want (very much) to persuade you to read it.
Gordon Livingstone MD has the credentials. He is a psychiatrist and psychotherapist who experienced a training
psychoanalysis. He must be in his 60s. He is a graduate of West Point and went (willingly) to the Vietnam War.
He was disillusioned by the war and staged a protest, which led to him being discharged ‘as an embarrassment to
the command’. His oldest son developed bipolar disorder and suicided. Thirteen months later, his youngest son
died of leukaemia. He has a married daughter.
It is an easy book to read – there are only 250 words to a page and the chapters are only four pages long (on
average). It is written in a clear, succinct style with a good deal of flare: ‘life . . . this flicker of consciousness between
two great silences’. There is some humour: ‘Think of the traffic problems if we all liked the same things’.
The subtitle is ‘Thirty Things You Need to Know Now’. There is one thing per chapter. Recurring themes are the
need to behave in a responsible and kindly/loving manner, past events/consequences predict future events/
consequences and the need to take risks.
Obviously, I am very taken by this book. But don’t therefore dismiss it as typical crabby old man’s stuff. There is
much which challenged and has influenced my beliefs. One such statement, ‘Our children owe us nothing’, caught
me napping. But Livingston is quite clear, ‘We knew from the beginning that we were raising them to leave us and
it was always our obligation to help them do things unburdened by a sense of unending gratitude or perpetual debt’.
The unfair and wasteful quarantining of the elderly, as if they have nothing to offer, is decried. But then, up pops
criticism of the elderly for complaining and the view that they may bring their isolation on themselves: ‘most old
people are preoccupied with self-cantered complaints’. Again, Livingston is quite clear: ‘I believe that parenthood,
a voluntary commitment, does not incur a reciprocal obligation in the young – either to conform their lives to
our parental preferences, or to listen endlessly to our protests about the ravages of time. In fact, I am of the opinion
that the old have a duty to suffer the losses of age with as much grace and determination as they can muster and
avoid inflicting their discomforts on those who love them’.
What is the most important thing to do for our kids? Livingston has a view: ‘It is a primary task of parents
throughout their lives to convey to the young a sense of optimism . . . a conviction that we can achieve happiness
amid the losses and uncertainties that life contains is the greatest gift that can pass from one generation to the next’.
Want to be happy? Livingston says: ‘The three components of happiness are something to do, someone to love
and something to look forward to’.
The view is strongly put that we are responsible for our actions, and that actions are more important than words.
There is praise for Alcoholics Anonymous.
There is social comment: ‘We live in a society that has elevated complaint to a primary form of public discourse’.
And, criticism of psychiatry for ‘over-reliance on pharmacological solutions’ and having ‘created a plethora of
Australasian Psychiatry • Vol 14, No 4 • December 2006

diagnoses that are really just descriptions of certain patterns of behaviour’. Multiple personality disorder is
described as ‘almost certainly a therapist-induced state in highly suggestible people’ and the diagnosis of attention
deficit disorder is criticized.
Livingston observes that our constant challenge is to find happiness in an imperfect world, and adds, ‘We are
impeded in this effort if we cling to an idealized vision of the past that insures dissatisfaction with the present’.
Those disconsolate with the paragraph above may believe the author is not heeding his own advice.
Those of us raised on Rogerianism never gave advice. We never learned what was right and wrong. Modern
therapists are more active and self-assured. All of us – therapists, patients and others – will find much of value in
this book.
Saxby Pridmore
Hobart, Tasmania

doi: 10.1111/j.1440-1665.2006.02319.x

422 © 2006 Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists