You'll Learn Something About Yourself!
Customer Rating: 
Riveting memoirs of ten of Dr. Yalom's most intriguing patients in psychotherapy! For the budding therapist in me, the stories were so infused with memorable insights into a therapist's mind. Dr. Yalom shares his success, failure, insights, and bewilderment with transparent honesty. I felt like I was in his head during these actual therapy sessions, listening in on the chatter of one of the great psychological minds of our time.
I would highly recommend the book to two other groups of people. First, those who love stories - these are some of the best and most exciting as Dr. Yalom constantly takes you from the conversation with his patients into his own mind and then back to the session. The stories are fairly short, fast paced, and exciting, for those who struggle with giving attention to a book.
Second, to those who are simply interested in exploring their own lives through voyeuristically looking deep into the lives of Dr. Yalom's patients. He hides nothing at all - you'll see to the core of a person's heart and mind, the deepest and most confidential thoughts of a human being are shared here - thoughts and confessions of death, murder, rape, affairs, and dream life (all the clients are of course disguised and consented to their story being told).
So, if you're interested in great personal stories of lives that were changed in psychotherapy for whatever reason - to get a view into your own deep life struggles, to learn from one of the great therapists, or to just hear some amazingly detailed and heart-wrenching stories - I'm gonna tell you to go buy and read the book.
Liberation
Customer Rating: Along with a mountain of other texts, this book was required reading my first psychotherapy course. I was enrolled in a PhD program in clinical psychology, with a relatively strict orientation towards cognitive behavioral therapy. One of my concerns was that I would have to assume a persona, a guy in a labcoat with a clipboard. The most powerful impact Yalom's book had on me as a young therapy student was the understanding that who I am as a person both would and should impact who I am as a therapist. I felt liberated. Yes, I needed to have a philosophical/theoretical foundation to the work I would do with clients, but who I was would influence the work that I did.
I experienced the "narcissism" that so appalled some reviewers as breathtaking honesty. We are all of us human. Any therapist who reports being free of all unacceptable responses to clients, of never having a thought or engaging in an exchange that was more a function of one's own history and struggles is either deluded or a liar. Should doing therapy with clients be a substitute for addressing all of one's own foibles? Absolutely not, nor does Yalom suggest as much. However, a therapist who experiences clients as "less than," people from whom we can learn nothing, fills me with far more dread than a therapist who acknowledges an ignoble response to a client or the fact that s/he is also imperfect and capable of prejudice. None of us who is honest can say that we have each and every one of these reactions and prejudices perfectly catelogued or perfectly conquered. Life is about growth. I don't think we're supposed to stop doing that until we enter the Great Dirt Nap.
As for those upset by some of his revelations, (e.g., to the "fat lady," his internal sexual response to female clients) I have two questions: 1) Prior to achieving sublime self-actualization wherein I no longer have such inappropriate responses, just what *should* I do about them? Pretend they aren't there? Engage in self-flagellation like a medieval monk? Well, a wise person knows where these approaches lead; 2) Do you really think that the 20 or so pages of each vignette actually encompasses every important aspect of the therapy, or is Yalom attempting to address some very limited themes and issues?
It has been about 18 years since I first read Yalom's book and let me say that I do not conduct therapy as Dr. Yalom does. First, I am not Irvin Yalom, nor have I ever tried to be Irvin Yalom. Secondly, the ugly reality of the field of psychotherapy today is that unless one exclusively services the very wealthy (something I am not willing to do--behold one of my own unconquered prejudices), we are very limited as to the time we can spend with our clients. I still consider myself to be a cognitive-behavioral therapist, an orientation of which Yalom is not a big fan. I also have some disagreements with Yalom regarding the value of diagnosis and other matters. But in addition to the early liberation I described above, Yalom's wonderful book has helped me to be less doctrinaire, more flexible, willing to embrace alternate approaches and more client-focused, more accepting of my own imperfections and understanding the absolute necessity of addressing them. I think I'm a damned good therapist, and I thank Yalom and this book for setting me on the road.
When starting work with an intern, I typically give them a copy of this book. As a goodbye, I give a copy of Yalom's The Gift of Therapy: An Open Letter to a New Generation of Therapists and Their Patients. The latter is an excellent selection of brief lessons in conducting psychotherapy and is also highly recommended. I can't guarantee that every psychotherapist-in-training or practicing psychotherapist who reads them will have a transforming experience, but I would hope that at minimum one would pick up an idea or two that will positively impact your practice in the future.
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