An unabashedly intimate, increasingly challenging, often fun, always homespun jaunt through some eight decades of personal and professional growth, told through what the author calls her "coming of age" stories.
From her first question—"What are we allowing to happen?"—to her last—"Are we there yet?"—seasoned professor Mona Gustafason Affinito draws on personal tales of the science of psychology, illustrating its essence and applying it to real life without the dreaded demands of academia. Throughout her writing are threaded clues to the potentially cruel shadow side of human nature—one that can be provoked and exposed in all of us.
By the time you've finished reading this book, you'll be surprised to discover how much psychology you've learned without realizing. You'll be prepared to finally offer up your own solutions to the title's question. And you will know, beyond a doubt, that there are always new and exciting discoveries to consider.
At the age of sixteen or thereabouts, Mona Gustafson Affinito declared her determination never to be a teacher. At twenty-two, propelled by a love of psychology, she began her life's work as an educator, administrator, workshop leader, therapist, and author. In this memoir, her final seminar, with no holds barred and unabashed intimacy, she shares her excitement at conveying the tools, findings, theories, meanings, and utility of psychology. If there would be a second semester, there would be plenty of new material for the syllabus—because, as the author repeatedly emphasizes, there is never the answer in science, where questioning, tentative answers, and growth are the essence of the process.
"Mona Gustafson Affinito has loved every minute of her seventy years as a psychologist. Here she writes with humor, courage and incessant curiosity about the larger questions of life, raising, for example, the titular question of good people letting terrible things happen. Without bitterness, Dr. Affinito makes her way, valiantly and mostly successfully, through gender bias in her field and in her personal life. Finally, her thoughtful postscript adds a philosophical response to the question posed by the title. In the end, Mona Gustafson Affinito prevails with goodwill, energy and insight fully intact." — Mary W Nicholas, LCSW, PhD, Author, The Mystery of Goodness and the Positive Moral Consequences of Psychotherapy
"Dr. Affinito invites us to share her deeply intimate memories of eight decades of personal and career growth told through the lens of the science of psychology, its teaching, and its practice. As she transports her reader into the sights, sounds, tastes, smells, touches and changing role limitations of the passing years, she gently keeps asking the central question, 'How could these lovely people let it happen?' Be prepared to pick up on the developing clues as psychology itself matures, finally to construe your own answer with the help of the postscript she provides. In the process you will be utterly delighted by her life, intelligence, honesty, and hilarious dry wit." — The Reverend Kyle M. Jackson, Senior pastor, Mount Calvary Lutheran Church, Excelsior, MN
"'How could these lovely people let it happen?' is more than a title. It is a refrain punctuating the author's lifelong search for an understanding of the crucial challenges facing humanity in the 1930s, the 1940s, the 1950s, through the decades until today, and all the way through tomorrow. Will the book give the answers? I don't think so, but that does not seem to be its goal. What it does, beautifully, is elevate the value of a life filled with questions, encourage life beyond the traditional societal roles and expectations, and celebrate life moving toward freedom. Despite all the obstacles, forward and onward, Mona Gustafson Affinito takes us on a journey, teaches us to see, mentors us to hear, and, most importantly, models for us the precious art of feeling with history, and with her." — Marina Bluvshtein, PhD, LP, MA, LMFT, NASAP-certified Adlerian psychotherapist; NASAP diplomate in Adlerian psychology
"It feels like the author wrote her story just for me! I imagined us having coffee at her kitchen table, laughing one moment, intense the next, as I circled each variation of the word freedom and underlined every hint as to why nice people could ignore cruelty. On every page this seasoned professor also taught me the science of psychology in a way that made sense to my own life. I really didn't want our visits to stop, but when we finished, I saw neither blame nor condemnation. Instead, I felt hope and grace for those in the title question, there and then, here and now." — Barbara R. Cameron, Ed.D., Retired secondary teacher/administrator; led first US/USSR high school exchange for the USIA
"Dr. Mona Gustafson Affinito's wildly accessible writing offers readers a fascinating window onto her life's journey. Her take on how those 'lovely people' could do 'something like that'—i.e., go along with the rise of Nazism in Germany during the 1930s—is rooted in decades of psychological training, study and clinical experience. Well worth a read!" — Kirsten Lind Seal, PhD, LMFT, Teaches ethics; co-creator of Relationship Reboot on WCCO's Mid-Morning Show
"Reading this as a high school senior really changed how I see both psychology and the world around me. This book was eye-opening, and Dr. Affinito's thoughts made me question things I never had before. I'd recommend this to anyone, but especially people my age—it really sticks with you." — Delanie Counts, Integrated Arts Academy, Chaska, MN
