Robin Skynner and John Cleese

Life and How to Survive It

With cartoons by Bud Handelsman

England's odd couple—psychiatrist-scholar Robin Skynner and comic John Cleese--embark on an entertaining and mind-stretching search for what really matters in life.

What makes people tick? What about families, organizations such as schools and businesses, or societies? By understanding them, can we make them tick better? How do value systems evolve? Where does religion fit in?

Starting with such provocative questions as these, Robin Skynner and John Cleese launch into a lively, honest, and entertaining discussion of life and how to survive it. Whatever the area-from the intimacy of the couple to broadly defined cultures--they ask, "What is really healthy behavior?" Ultimately, they reveal universal principles of healthy living and methods for quick adaptation to change.

The book's practical focus provides a map to guide people in their everyday lives and to help them maintain their individuality while cooperating in joint endeavors. Exploring also the nature of competition and sportsmanship, of humor in relation to health, and of change and how to cope with it throughout life, this book breaks new ground in our search for meaning in life.

"It is a mind-stretching privilege to listen in on the conversation between these two gifted observers of the life scene. Their exchanges are literate, wise, playfully humorous, disturbing, and brilliant." --James L. Framo, Ph.D.