Reviews

Below are several reviews...do you have a chocolate in your mouth?

Do you need Chocolate

The Express UK Nov 18th 1999

A new book makes the unusual claim that your relationship with the cocoa bean defines who you are. Viv Groskop investigates.

Have you ever thought you are becoming overly dependent on chocolate? Do you love it and feel guilty when you eat too much? If so Murray Langham has written the book for you.

A counsellor from New Zealand, Murray discovered "Chocolate Therapy" - a means of "exploring the self though chocolate" after he noticed that many of his patients had a close relationship with it. He found that by observing his patients' choc-obsessed habits-what they chose, why they chose it, what they disliked and what they loved - he could discover more about their personalities than by just asking the patients straightforward questions about themselves, as you would in regular therapy.

"I started asking my clients what sort of chocolates they like to eat," he says, "and I began to notice that people chose similar confectionery according to their personality."

To determine, or "read", your chocolate personality, as Murray explains in his book Chocolate Therapy (Souvenir Press) you need to take a box of chocolates and carefully choose four chocolates from the selection. It is the combination of these four and the order in which you have chosen them that gives your unique reading. "You have to make four choices of chocolate," Murray explans, " the centre or flavour is the most important thing. But you can look at the shape to determine your type. "If you chose oval, you are a stressed person. If you choose square, then you are a headachy sort of person." Your favourite flavour is the most eloquent indication of your inner character. "Strawberry people, like me generally like to be wanted and needed," Murray says. "They keep the peace. They can be used as a doormat. That side of them could be modified by their next chocolate, though. "If you choose a hard caramel next, that is a practical choice- you are working things out using systems. This modifies the strawberry choice, as strawberry people are romantic and take decisions by instinct." Each of your four favourite chocolates determines character traits; the first you choose is the most dominant aspect to your personality. Coffee means you are impatient; hazelnut shows you're in tune with nature; orange equals a caring side; mint means you have an open mind. If you like raspberry, you're seeking to recapture childhood innocence. And a passion for almond means you would appear flippant to people who don't know you.

"The only flavours I haven't done are macadamia or sultana," Murray adds because they don't come up that often." Murray was a chef and a restaurant manager before becoming a practising therapist in New Zealand, where he lives in a village near Wellington. He has always been fascinated by people's relationship with food and believes that as long as someone is willing, thay can discover a lot about themselves through analysing their chocolate eating patterns. "As a therapist, I believe that life should be fun," he says. "With chocolate therapy, the idea is to learn about yourself. Some therapists are so serious - and some people won't learn if they are limited by that seriousness.

" It is all about reflecting back to the patient that they are what they love.

He claims that many of his readings have been spookily spot-on. "I once gave a reading to a woman in a bookshop,"he recalls. "She said 'Oh, my husband absolutely loves Turkish delight. What does that mean? Well, people who like turkish delight are usually on a spiritual quest of some kind, or looking for something that is missing in their lives.

" When I told her this, she went to find him. It turned out he had become a born-again Christian. "You get very few people who would choose turkish delight but they always confirm this idea of looking for something, as this man did." Uncanny.

Editorial corrections by Murray to the above...

I have owned and run 2 restaurants in Wellington.

The shape oval can mean that when stressed you need to blob out with a book or TV. Square shape does indicate headaches when stressed, but both must be looked at in the overall reading.

Sultana-raisin is on the way.