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Dr. Edward Shapiro's “Finding a Place to Stand” is an important and ambitious effort to create order out of our increasingly frightening and fragmented global society. A dynamic systems theorist, family therapist, psychoanalyst, interviewer of unaffiliated voters before the 1996 United States elections, and former CEO and Medical Director of Austen Riggs from 1991 to 2011, Dr. Shapiro is well-positioned to present a roadmap for the individual to occupy the role of fully informed citizen, and a blueprint for the construction of an integrated global society. It is through the unit that he has come to know best—the institution, with an open-minded, psychologically sophisticated leader who gives all stakeholders a role in negotiating that unit's mission—that he begins to describe the interpretive stance that lies at his core of citizenship.
The book is divided into three sections: (1) Joining, in which he describes the prototypical well-functioning “institution” (note: “institution” is his phrase in place of “organization,” which he says does not include consideration of mission), how one can join it, and the skills necessary to become part of it with psychological understanding, agency, and recognition of the integrity of the mind of the other, which he captures throughout the book with the phrase, “how are they right?”; (2) Leadership and the Self-reflective Institution, in which he draws from his experiences in various organizations, including the steps along the way toward leading Austen Riggs, his approach to circumstances in leadership that he handled expertly and circumstances he mismanaged, ultimately leading to reparative learning opportunities; and (3) A Citizen in Society, in which he gathers the pearls from the first two sections and recommends how this country can begin to mend its internal split and serve as a role model for other multicultural nations working toward their acceptance of differences.
Dr. Shapiro does the reader a service on many levels. First