Love and therapy are incompatible: “the good therapist fights darkness and seeks illumination, while romantic love is sustained by mystery and crumbles upon inspection;” Be careful not to isolate: seeing patients one on one all day can be isolating.Therapists sometimes become solitary creatures Consequently, Yalom is worried that what he leaves behind is a world in which psychotherapy is seen as just another job from which someone is to make a profit, rather than a humane discipline whose sole objective is to help people – regardless of the cost.

Certainly helpful to therapists and patients, may also help any thoughtful person seeking to improve relationships with others and self-understanding. Booklist A heightened sensibility to existential issues” and awareness of the process of interpersonal communication is what helps a psychotherapist really understand what do the actual content of the words of the patients says about them, their health, and their objectives. The Structure of the Book So as to help your patients achieve this, never reinforce victimhood – even if nine-tenths of the bad things that happened to them are someone else’s fault, focus on the one-tenth in which their actions mattered. My patients’ dreams have changed. Cobwebs fill my hat. My office is dark and deserted. I am nowhere to be found.In other and plainer words: it is one thing to explicitly start a discussion about death, isolation, meaning and freedom (content), and a completely another thing to implicitly derive conclusions from stories which seemingly bear no relation to these existential topics. These are the things everyone is explicitly or implicitly interested in; it is through an analysis of a subject’s relation to them that we can learn most about him or her. Therapists Are Descendants of Jesus and Buddha Born to Russian parents in Washington D.C., Yalom developed a personal model of existential psychotherapy in the 1970s and his 1980 book Existential Psychotherapy is considered the classical introduction to the form. The Gift Of Therapy (Revised And Updated Edition): An open letter to a new generation of therapists and their patients My patients worry about my health: will I be there for the long haul of therapy? When I leave for vacation, they fear I will never return. They imagine attending my funeral or visiting my grave.

At once startlingly profound and irresistibly practical, Yalom's insights — let the patient matter to you; create a new kind of therapy for each patient; how and how not to use self-disclosure — will help enrich the therapeutic process for both patient and counselor. VideoA fabulous book I would recommend to any aspiring or current therapist. Irvin Yalom writes concise and easy-to-read chapters that span several pertinent psychological topics, such as how to exude empathy and when to self-disclose. He hits on unique subjects like the relationship between sex and therapy, as well as the role of research in a therapeutic setting. His advice to focus on the present and to engage with clients in a way that transcends typical boundaries shows his expertise and insight to the field of therapy, and his use of case studies keeps The Gift of Therapy an inviting and intriguing read.

Since first entering the field of psychiatry,” Yalom says, “I have had two abiding interests: group therapy and existential therapy.” Here, interspersed with examples from his own clinical practice, you’ll find many useful pieces of advice regarding numerous different aspects of psychotherapy. Reading what Dr. Yalom wrote was like listening from a grandfather sitting at his feet. This is his first book I'm reading and I'm sure this won't be the last. The emotions that raced in me as I read his open letters were diverse but a few among them were nurtured, healed and understood. I guess he not only has a way of healing people with his talks but also does quite a job in healing through writing.

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After this, the book includes several chapters (#45 – #51) dealing with the last of the givens of existence – freedom – and its corollaries: responsibility and decision-making. Remove the Obstacles to Growth When I was finding my way as a young psychotherapy student, the most useful book I read was Karen Horney's Neurosis and Human Growth. And the single most useful concept in that book was the notion that the human being has an inbuilt propensity toward self-realization. If obstacles are removed, Horney believed, the individual will develop into a mature, fully realized adult, just as an acorn will develop into an oak tree. T]echnique has a different meaning for the novice than for the expert. One needs technique in learning to play the piano but eventually, if one is to make music, one must transcend learned technique and trust one's spontaneous moves.” Anyone who wants a glimpse into the highest level of psychotherapy would enjoy this book. Who would not enjoy this book?