"Intellectually and clinically substantial, I Shop, Therefore I Am: Compulsive Buying and the Search for Self is so timely it ought to be on bookshelves everywhere, from the consulting room to the training institute. Given the remarkable explosion of e-commerce, Benson's focus on this subject seems almost prescient. It is impossible to imagine any therapist who doesn't come across the problem of compulsive buying-and equally impossible to imagine most clinicians having any idea about how to handle it. Dr. Benson has courage to take on this much disparaged, yet central aspect of everyday life."

Ron Taffel, Ph.D.
Director, Family and Couples Treatment Service,
Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy

"This is a substantive, impressive, and important book that should be read by every clinician in practice. It is the first work ever to attempt—and largely succeed at—a serious, comprehensive examination of the nature of compulsive or addictive shopping, spending, and buying, problems now astonishingly widespread, usually denied, and nearly always concealed. It is a work that is both flawed and inspired, at once infuriating, stimulating, annoying, and exhilarating. It is somewhat wrong at times; at other times, dead right. Fortunately, it is more often the latter. In the end, this work is a significant and valuable contribution to healing in the new century."

Jerrold Mundis
Author of How to Get Out of Debt, Stay Out of Debt and Live Prosperously

"Shopping, often ridiculed, pathologized as an obsession and a perversion, and associated with frivolous women, has now been given serious, balanced, and substantive treatment. Using current contributions from infant research, motivational systems theory, self psychology, and relational psychoanalytic perspectives, Dr. Benson and her contributors add to the literature on shopping by indicating its self-sustaining and self-enhancing aspects. Richly illustrating all aspects of the shopping experience, this book addresses the multitude of psychological issues encompassed and negotiated in the process of shopping."

Frank M. Lachmann, Ph.D. and Beatrice Beebe, Ph.D.
Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity, New York City

April Benson's "I Shop Therefore I Am: Compulsive Buying and the Search for Self is a comprehensive and timely examination of an understudied but emerging public health problem. Our understanding of compulsive shopping, along with the other impulse control disorders, is rapidly changing and this book will surely facilitate a reexamination and reconceptualization. Including material on shopping as a drug; gender and self-image issues; psychiatric assessment; psychopharmacology; and psychodynamic, couples, and self-help approaches, this book is a tour de force."

Eric Hollander, M.D.
Professor of Psychiatry, Director Compulsive, Impulsive and Anxiety Disorders Program, Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, New York City.

"Dr. Benson and her colleagues have given us the first serious, scholarly, comprehensive (and fascinating) study of compulsive buying, its root causes, accompanying disorders, and treatment approaches."

Joseph A. Califano, Jr.
Chairman and President, The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, Columbia University

I Shop, Therefore I Am is a Shopping Bag filled with a veritable cornucopia of well-made and carefully placed articles. Exploring the contents of this book-bag takes the reader into its deepest depths, as if into the "fabric" of the bag itself wherein lies the previously taboo realm of compulsive buying, spending, and shopping. For this reason alone the book is singularly important and a "must read" for interested persons from a wide range of perspectives.

I Shop, Therefore I Am is at once thought provoking and behavior challenging. Being part introduction, part overview, and part anthology, the book nonetheless unpacks its material with purposeful movement and in clear and readable language. Indeed, the more one reads, the more one wants to read! Each chapter contains compelling insights, all of which are brilliantly woven together into a single piece in editor April Lane Benson's own concluding essay. Nuances of definition are revealed as writers from behavioral, biological, psychological, social and spiritual disciplines present their understandings of the scope and nature of problems related to money-use, as well as assessment and treatment options.

But Benson does not leave us consumed by the bag! Quite the contrary-in noting that the exchange of money for goods and services can be done as "conscious shopping" she suggests that shopping can be about the "process of search…about being" rather than having or buying. She thus leaves the reader searching for the next book-bag(s?) of goodies, in which one might hope to find essays attending to issues of culture, ethnicity, socio-economic status and downward mobility in relation to "shopping gone bad", as well as a fuller exposition of the reparative use of shopping, or "shopping gone good."

When all is said and done, however, I guarantee - after reading this book you will never shop the same way again!

Martha Jacobi, M. Div.,MSSW

NSGCD Chronical Review- 2009

Read the review as published in the Chronical by clicking here.

Andrea Sharb
Owner of S.O.S. (Sharb Organizing Solutions)

Dr. Benson was a pioneer in the field of eating disorders, cofounding one of the first clinics and training centers. In this must read collection she again leads the way in tackling the burgeoning epidemic of compulsive shopping and money disorders in general. In fact anyone interested in the psychological issues of money will find this book fascinating.

We all have clients and acquaintances who have problems with shopping, buying and debting but many of us are ill equipped to address these problems because we are not educated in this area. Dr. Benson has gathered the leaders in the field and in her fastidious quest for quality has created an excellent and most readable reference book for all.

The first section gives an overview of the field with such topics as When money is the drug (Bounty). She then  focuses on shopping, buying and selfhood with such interesting topics as Are we what we own? (Belk), Collecting as reparation (Muensterberger) and Giving until it hurts (McGrath). Included is the diagnostic assessment of compulsive shopping with questionnaires and clinical interview techniques. Another section covers psychodynamic theory and technique and includes Compulsive shopping as an addiction (Goldman) and The use of money as an action symptom (Krueger).

Detailed and instructive coverage of treatment plans and techniques include a detailed curricular for an 8 week Group cognitive behavioral therapy for buying disorders (Burgard and Mitchell) and a Psychoeducational group therapy for money disorders (Brazer). The scope of the collection is apparent from the inclusion of treatment adjuncts such as Debtors Anonymous and Psychotherapy (Levine & Kellen) and Financial Recovery Counseling (McCall.).

This is a truly multidisciplinary book which will illuminate and deepen therapeutic understanding of a growing problem area. Anyone who has struggled with one of the issues discussed in this book will find it helpful in their own personal lives. The book is a fascinating and enjoyable read for all.

Bonnie Kellen, Ph.D.