Overcoming shyness

Press, 14 November 1981, Page 17

Overcoming shyness

Shyness: What it is and what to do about it. By Philip G. Zimbardo. Pan, 1981. 298 pp. $4.95 (paperback). (Reviewed by Ralf Unger) Dr Zimbardo is probably best known in social psychology for his studies of what happens to people when they play the parts of prisoner and warder in a simulated penal environment. With his viewpoint of the importance of behavioural influences on basic personality, and a very down-to-earth approach as to how people learn to interact with one another, it is not surprising that he has established a Shyness Clinic in California to assist sufferers from this very disabling feature. Part of this book is an attempt to understand what this disturbance of approach called shyness actually is, from the viewpoints of different psychological theoreticians. These vary from genetic familial factors, through psychoanalytic views that the symptom is a conscious manifestation of unconscious conflicts, to the view of the social psychologist, suggesting for instance that shyness starts because one is labelled shy and continues to so view oneself.

Supporting this is the correlation between being first born and being shy.

possibly because later born children have to develop more effective interpersonal skills, having a power disadvantage compared with the first born. Unfortunately, shy people find it most difficult to ask for help and it is in this way that the characteristic can continue throughout a lifetime. In the later sections of the book. Dr Zimbardo mentions little-known facts of shyness among apparent outgoing performers such as Carol Burnett, and then continues with a variety of exercises to change the life of the person who dies a thousand deaths in social relations. The steps and questionnaires to be filled out are all simple, well-communicated and thought out. The theoretical bases of studies in American as well as Chinese and Japanese cultures, although not of such relevance to the shy person, are of interest to the social psychologist. In overcoming shyness, Zimbardo finally concludes, “we celebrate life and discover in ourselves a capacity to love and an energy for living that we dared not recognise before." This short, inexpensive paperback can be recommended as being head and shoulders above most self-help books, and can look the World in the eye with an unwavering, self-reliant gaze.