''Families and How to Survive Them'' is a bestselling
self-help book
A self-help book is one that is written with the intention to instruct its readers on solving personal problems. The books take their name from '' Self-Help'', an 1859 best-seller by Samuel Smiles, but are also known and classified under "self- ...
co-authored by the psychiatrist and psychotherapist
Robin Skynner
Robin Skynner (16 August 1922 in Cornwall–24 September 2000 in Islington, London) was a psychiatric pioneer and innovator in treating mental illness.
As a young man during World War II, Skynner was a Royal Air Force (RAF) pilot who flew the ...
and the comedian
John Cleese
John Marwood Cleese ( ; born 27 October 1939) is an English actor, comedian, screenwriter, and producer. Emerging from the Cambridge Footlights in the 1960s, he first achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as a scriptwriter and ...
. It was first published in 1983, and is illustrated throughout by the cartoonist
J. B. Handelsman
J.B. Handelsman (February 5, 1922 – June 20, 2007) was a New York-born cartoonist and illustrator whose work appeared for decades in ''The New Yorker'', ''Punch'', ''Playboy'', and other United States and British publications. His sister was A ...
. The book takes the form of a series of dialogues between Skynner, playing the role of therapist, and Cleese, who adopts the role of inquisitive lay person.
The book was also serialised as a six-part radio series for the UK
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
, with each episode being 30 minutes long. This was also in the form of a convivial conversation between Cleese and Skynner and following the same structure as the book, albeit in an abridged form. It was subsequently released on
''.
The book is a description and analysis of how and why we fall in love, how we develop from babies to adolescents to adults, and how during this development we so often become "stuck" in childlike behaviour, and how all these things are influenced by previous generations in our families. The authors themselves have said that the aim of the book was "to make intelligible and accessible the psychological aspects of how families behave and function, what makes some work and others fail, and how families can move up the scale towards greater health and happiness".
The motivation behind it was to "make available to the general public, in a way that was easy to absorb, those aspects of psychological knowledge we had found most helpful ourselves towards making life more understandable, meaningful, and enjoyable".