Yes, that's pretty much what it is. It might be helpful for some though. People have more unresolved problems than they are willing to admit without spanking. Not my genre, but I would not dismiss it entirely. Different strokes for different folks.
With all due respect to people who found this book useful I found it completely useless. Mark Douglas was super smart though to make it clear that you must already have a winning system, or an edge in trading. Right, however, if you truly have developed a winning system, then you should believe in your system and trade accordingly, why would you have that much "psychological" issues to battle? Most traders believe they did not trade well because they could not overcome emotional issues such as not honoring stop loss, chasing or over trading while they knew they shouldn't be doing so, hence the importance of psychological aspect. However, if traders read market correctly and enter trades at good places, the emotional battle should be greatly reduced. For me personally, if "the hell broke loose" emotionally, it was always because I did not read market correctly, as a result I forced the trades at wrong places and got frustrated. So we circle back to the original issue of reading market correctly. To read market correctly is a graduate process and i believe it takes five to ten thousands hours to cultivate and refine. This is a long journey, and you can only walk the journey yourself. If Trading In the Zone was a doctor, he was asking to treat patients who must be already healthy (have a system, knew how to trade). But if you already put in all the great efforts in making sure you are healthy, why do you need such a doctor of nothingness? Above is my humble opinion.
The phrase "...you should believe in your system..." is the reason there are trading coaches like Mark Douglas. What if you have an edge, but either can't bring yourself to trade it, or you react to price movement long after a valid trade was signaled and make errors that erase or invert your edge? You can either automate (and you'll still be likely to override your system's signals/trade management), or you can seek help deactivating damaging beliefs and developing the trader's mindset necessary to profit from your edge. Every day doctors treat patients who are healthy, but fear they are sick. If the patient continues to imagine they are sick in the absence of illness, the physician will most likely refer them to a psychologist for help deactivating damaging beliefs.
Sounds like the book just isn't targeted for you then. I've met a few traders that have opinions like yours about Trading in the Zone, and after talking with them a few revealed that they don't yet have an edge they can rely on, so effectively, the book was not the grail they were seeking and in their mind they didn't understand how psychology had anything to do with a winning system. However, to use a sports analogy, talk to a national pro league athlete or Olympic metal winner about the difference between technique (a system) and the psychology behind performing well. They'll tell you silly things like wearing lucky socks or going through a pre-game routine that involves mediation... these are people who also practice their technique so often silly mind games shouldn't matter. But it does. Again, few people will understand this when they are still struggling to sink 3 pointers and believe they just need a better stance and follow-through. For them, they think the game is all still technical, and they wouldn't see the benefit in mastering the mental side.
For the vast majority of traders, Trading in the Zone will be useless to them.. Why? Because most traders mistake bad psychology with lack of an edge If you lack an edge to consistently pull money out of the markets then, bet your ass, you better listen to your instincts hardwired into you by mother nature...in this case your fear of pulling the trigger is warranted and is a natural defense mechanism designed to prevent you from hurting yourself (i.e., your account) If you indeed have an edge that has been thoroughly tested and makes money regardless of whether you take the signal or not but you still wrestle with following your rules then you need to seek professional help from a shrink instead of a book. All in all, trading psychology/mindset is highly overrated as a contributing factor that causes traders to lose money and anyone that says otherwise is simply making excuses and using it as a crutch for their inability to make money from trading
How about responding with something worth reading? You know, give that big ego of your's a rest for a change? Maybe what lead you to believe what you believe about trading psychology after your X years of trading... Or perhaps you're more interested in slinging shit around.. I guess you're at home here at ET if that's the case.
Then wether a trader truly has an edge or wether the edge still needs work becomes a question. That said, perhaps we have different understanding in what constitutes an "edge". An "edge" means to me not only a winning method, but also conviction in such a method. Conviction comes from seeing certain things happen over and over again and lots and lots of pain putting the method to test, for years, --- we as traders know this all too well. With conviction of his/her method, a trader should have entered a trade where he/she is supposed to without too much hesitation, not "react to price movement long after a valid trade was signaled". To me, conviction is part of the edge. If a trader is still not convinced ( believe) in his/her method after years of pain and hard work in deriving such a method, I don' know how another person can help to internalize such a conviction into the trader.