The Mask of Niceness

Review of Evelyn Sommers, The Tyranny of Niceness: Unmasking the Need for Approval, Toronto: The Dundurn Group, 2005, paperback, ISBN 10-1-55002-558-9240, 238 pages, $24.99.

Evelyn Sommers’ The Tyranny of Niceness brings a therapist’s insight into the psychological roots of niceness. By penetrating the fog of niceness, Sommers points out what is not nice about it, touching on the ambivalence, anger, envy, desire to manipulate, and self-delusion beneath the nervous smiles of niceness. She asks why we mask ourselves

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with it in order to gain approval and avoid rejection. Beyond representing empty platitudes, “niceness” also cloaks hypocrisy and a retreat from reality. Sommers urges patients in therapy to use their relationship with their analysts as a model for self transformation. In the consulting room, they can learn to be more self-reflective while exploring intrapsychic conflicts as they question and work to change lifelong habits of mind and behavior.

Through the experiences of her clients, Sommers shows how hiding one’s true feelings can alienate people from their own inner selves, ruin relationships, and lead to illness. Instead of standing outside of the subject as the “authority,” Sommers is frank about her own dispositions toward niceness and how they often confused and hampered her, leading to some painful experiences. The book argues that entrenched beliefs in our culture keep us policed by silence, and some silence (such as the refusing to openly account for a clandestine offense) can damage the trust and welfare of other people. The more we can chip away at facades and pithy clichés, the more critical and flexible our response to our worlds will be. Without the ability to reflect or think critically, we short-circuit our ability for self-examination and understanding.

We’ve all heard the saying: “flattery will get you nowhere” but we are probably less aware of how we use flattery to manipulate others. When people refuse to think through their feelings and opinions, they are in danger of becoming robotic and unquestioning of attitudes and prejudices held against some members of society. In order to maintain humane responsibility, people must be critical first, and then, if they wish, conforming. Hannah Arendt emphasized the need for people to engage in active internal dialectical thinking. Being nice, or agreeable, or overly compliant can become a habit that enables us to avoid making more difficult choices.

Sommers’ book is valuable for helping us to understand that change is always possible, and that staying silent when circumstances dictate that one should be outspoken can have serious consequences, even for one’s self. In one example, Sommers illustrates a patient’s overwhelming need to be nice to her physician and follow his orders, rather than to think through the wisdom of doing so. In that example, Sommers also discloses a painful truth about her own struggle as a medical patient when she failed to be outspoken about her wishes to her surgeon and underwent an unwanted hysterectomy. This portion of the book is especially effective and enhances its motivational power. Moreover, Sommers’ friendly and intimate tone demonstrates how an author can combine an agreeable and supportive approach with a critical and challenging perspective. She states that “one of the difficulties in writing a book such as this is that readers, left alone with their thoughts may see the worst in themselves. It is my hope that should this happen, that self-view will be short-lived.” She goes on to say that “I know from personal experience that the road to self-love is riddled with moments of self-loathing as we learn about our weaknesses. But our trip…encompasses these moments as surely as it encompasses an increasing amount of joy as we also recognize our attributes” (p. 134).

Sommers successfully explores the image of niceness, its origin, and consequences—“The High Cost of Being Nice”—and how to let go of it when it is no longer an expression of amiability, but a way to manipulate others in order to get what one wants. Sommers’ last chapter, “Letting Go of Niceness,” offers some tips for cultivating a fairer image of one’s own self and allowing one the room to make better decisions. Ironically, Sommers reminds us that if we agree with her too reflexively, too automatically, we ourselves are colluding with our own tendency to be passive and uncritically “nice;” we would rather defer to authority than risk disapproval. The author concludes that when the choice is continuing to relate in a mutually destructive manner, or taking a step outside of that dynamic, it is most often for the better to try to change the pattern. Holding on and acting upon the duality—one’s own needs and wishes along with the needs and wishes of others—is not impossible. It simply means allowing more of the script to be written as events actually happen, rather than trying to mold them.

My only problem with the book is that Sommers does not acknowledge the psychoanalytic and philosophical thinkers who have already foraged through this topic, including ones as familiar as Freud, Foucault, or Sartre. While this foundation may not be the immediate concern of the author, I think that, by avoiding it, Sommers detracts from her own argument. In reading, I kept wondering when she would link her ideas of silence breeding illness with Freud’s concepts of repression and reaction for-

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mation. Overall, Sommers’ book is very instructive. Giving up niceness and clichéd or lazy language means “speaking what is true and accurate and avoiding equivocation” (p. 78). A better awareness can foster more rewarding relationships and a greater personal authenticity.

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