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by Irvin Yalom, Basic Books, New York, 2015, 224 pp.
Yalom has been a prolific psychiatric writer for more than 30 years, all the while teaching and practicing in Palo Alto, California. His straightforward textbooks--The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy (1970), Existential Psychotherapy (1980), and Inpatient Group Psychotherapy (1984)--are still useful resources. In other works he has taught by example, using clinical narratives to let all of the rest of us into his consulting room example. Every Day Gets a Little Closer (1992), was written along with Yalom's patient Ginny Elkin, demonstrating not only how he worked but also showing, in her own words, how the patient experienced their work together. Other collections of his clinical narratives include Love's Executioner (1989), Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999), and I'm Calling the Police (2008) (again co-written with his patient, Robert Brent). In all of his work he emphasizes the importance--and the vicissitudes--of the relationship between patient and therapist. Clearly Yalom (2002) believes deeply in the curative power of psychotherapy, and in The Gift of Therapy , he appealed to both young psychiatrists and their patients to continue to make the relationship between patient and therapist central.
In his novels, Yalom (1996) has combined his insight as a therapist with a deep interest in philosophy. In Lying on the Couch he explores the intricacies of ethical and unethical relationships between therapists and patients by intertwining stories in which the various meanings of "lying" are reflected in interlocking relationships. When Nietzsche Wept (1992), The Spinoza Problem (2012), and The Schopenhauer Cure (2005) are clearly the work of a skilled psychotherapist who also feels comfortable in the world of philosophy.
This latest book is a compilation of ten clinical narratives....