Marshall B. Rosenberg (1934–2015)

My son used this title for a class he took his senior year in high school.

Gratitude. That's what I feel after finishing Rosenberg's book. And I know I will read it again, perhaps many times, because the ideas, so plainly presented, are foreign to my experience and way of thinking. I found myself in tears after reading the chapter "Expressing Anger Fully". The information resonated deep in my heart as true but also highlighted the experience of my upbringing in a home where anger and the show more unmet needs from which it sprang, as well as it's expression, were stifled. I also appreciated the message in the chapter entitled "Connecting Compassionately with Ourselves".

Rosenberg writes clearly and brings examples of dialog to the text. The prose isn't lilting literature, but the content is so stunning, so life-changing that serviceable writing is all that is needed. show less

There's no "there" there.

I'm sensing that you're frustrated.

Well, yeah! I mean, Nonviolent Communication is a great title. I think about the kind of inspirational shit your neighbour has on a magnet on their fridge, that could maybe benefit from being expanded into a whole program. Like, my friend talks about trying to only say things that are "necessary, true, and kind." I have some questions about exactly what that means in practice, but it sounds great as a principle from which to pursue show more nonviolence. And, like, yesterday I casually referred to a person of my acquaintance as a Nazi, and it's maybe a little bit brutalizing to your interlocutor to do that, right? Like, reserve that term for actual members of the National Socialist party? This is where the idea of "violent communication" takes me, and I think it's worth talking about how to avoid that stuff.

So if I hear you, you feel like Dr. Rosenberg's book doesn't help you avoid that kind of thing.

Thing is, like with so many of these self-help things, he doesn't give people credit for being able to keep two ideas in their head at one time. All the world's problems are due to people not feeling like they're heard. If we hear them, there's no limit to what we can accomplish. It's like that old joke: step 1--"implement the NVC process"; step 2--?????; step 3: profit! We all know listening is important--and while of course there is no the difficulty, at least one of the major difficulties, which isn't even touched, is the difference between listening, understanding, and agreeing, which makes it all the more unfortunate and egregious that Rosenberg leans so heavily on his work with Israeli and Palestinian negotiators for examples. Haven't really fixed that problem, have you, Marshall?

So you're feeling like you don't know how to engage with the process in a useful way.

The process doesn't know how to engage with me. And if it can't handle me, I'd love to see it handle scumbag investment bankers or Tamil refugees or, fuck, Joseph Kony.

It seems like you're feeling discouraged. How about a poem?

And this is the other thing. You can't take a platitude, pop it into rhyme, and present it as poetry. I recognize that I'm the one who's risking coming across as the anger bear here, but this process just seems so dishonest. Suffering people often need to hear that someone understands how they're feeling--yes. And we're all suffering--yes. This is the truth at the core of the book. But Rosenberg seems to want us to posit a world where nobody is going to engage insincerely in a way that can't be brought down by some good ol' NVC TLC, where our only disputes come from an inability to remember our common humanity, and crucially too, where if you guess wrong about what someone is feeling--and this is a process where for it to mean anything you sometimes have to guess in detail--it doesn't stymie the process. Everyone likes to be understood, but the more you leap out into someone else's headspace, the more you run the risk of getting it wrong.

It seems like you're worried about being misunderstood when you try to use the process, and feeling like you don't know how to communicate with people in a reliable way.

Well, we all face death alone, but no, I do okay at bridging the gap--as okay as the next guy. I just think that it's an art not a science let alone a management process, and I am highly suspicious of the fact that so many of your clients are Fortune 500 companies and MBA programs and shit, and nothing I've seen convinces me that this is anything more than understanding as manipulation. Empathy emerges between two people through a sort of alchemy, and both need to be open, and defusing someone's anger by parroting them back at themselves is doing them a sort of violence, even, and you're just teaching people to fake it. You're creating Mitt Romneys.

And I dunno, I think we do a decent job at hearing each other, mostly, I just think that's not the main issue, and if you presented this as a first step to dialogue in the spirit of "nothing ever changes unless you get the shitheads on board," I might be inclined to listen, but instead you treat the story like it's done when understanding is reached, sometimes explicitly dismissing the problems that remain and stem from systematic inequalities, like the woman who still couldn't go back to school or change her life but it didn't matter because she understood better why she blamed herself. But no! We don't blame ourselves because we haven't thought it out! We blame ourselves despite knowing better, because of human maladaptive things. Quit fucking us around, Marshall Rosenberg. The only people who need to be told what's in your book would never read it.

I'm sensing that you're frustrated.

Yup. show less

Non-Violent Communication (NVC) is an applied spirituality, by which I mean it takes a particular philosophical point of view of what it means to be human, one usually associated with religion/spirituality and explains how to make use of it in every day life. Before NVC, a systematic such approach wasn't readily available. For example, "Love thy neighbor" seems like difficult advice to follow and "Thou shalt not kill" seems straightforward enough but is more honored in the breach.

The show more philosophy, or premise of NVC, is that people for the most part want to help each other get their needs met but have been miseducated and frustrated into thinking it's a zero sum game. As a result, the world has become a violent place in which we make enemies out of those who would more naturally be our friends. Much of this violence has been reified into our language so we can barely speak to one another without implied threats or manipulations. Marshall Rosenberg, a former psychoanalyst, unimpressed by the results he was getting in the techniques he was taught to use, replaced his practice with the training outlined in this book and now says, for example, that he can solve longstanding problems between couples in only 20 minutes once he can identify what each of their needs are.

An outline of a case from the book: A couple fighting over money begins by accusing each other (which Dr Rosenberg calls "diagnosing"). Then, when called on it, each retreats to telling each other what they need to do (Dr Rosenberg calls this "strategizing") and only finally are able to indentify their needs. He needs to feel financially secure while she needs to feel respected and treated as if she's capable of learning how to handle money responsibly. She can then empathize with his need for security and he with her need for trust and respect. With mutual empathy, they can find a solution that takes both of their needs into consideration. If the brilliance of this way of reframing a dispute isn't obvious from my summary, you should read the book and watch it play out in a variety of circumstances.

Later chapters explain using NVC to replace retributive justice with restorative justice, and with giving and receiving gratitude. In the audiobook edition, Marshall also sings us a few appropriate songs, accompanying himself on the guitar.

It requires a special brilliance to be able to take a technique so formulaic and make such sweeping changes to the world. Like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), NVC thinks that all we need is to be retrained in a new discipline. For a (former) psychoanalyst, Marshall seems too willing to take what his clients tell him at face value. For example, I can think of many more reasons a person would have trouble expressing or receiving gratitude than the ones in his examples. And just being present and empathic is a lot more difficult than he makes it out to be. None the less I want to rate this book five stars. Marshall tells us that when he taught a class, he refused to give his students grades but I will give his book a grade anyway. show less

After borrowing this book from the public library I really want to purchase it myself. I felt Marshall B. Rosenberg did a fine job communicating his ideals. This should not have surprised me as Rosenberg has made almost all of his money communicating with others on how to communicate. At first I thought NVC was a really cheesy idea because "no one talks like that" and I still think it can be ridiculous if taken to the extreme. I certainly see how, when used correctly NVC can better ones life show more and interactions with others. However, I'm finding that when the opportunity arises I am often having difficulty remembering the stops that Marshall B. Rosenberg taught. Partially it could be the difference of Rosenberg being strait and to the point, unlike the 19th century libertarian philosophers I have been reading lately. He is not repeating himself again and again. So this certainly has advantages and disadvantages. I also found myself while reading of it, allowing my mind to wonder into how others can use it, like my parents, instead of focusing on how I can better my life by using NVC. So its on my wishlist for myself so that I can quickly and easily reference and may decide to get for others too. show less