Existential Psychotherapy
Existential Psychotherapy Books
- ISBN13: 9780465021475
- Shape up: USED – VERY GOOD
- Notes:
Product Description
The noted Stanford University psychiatrist distills the essence of a wide range of therapies into a masterful, creative synthesis, opening up a new way of understanding each person’s confrontation with four ultimate concerns: isolation, meaninglessness, death, and freedom.
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Yalom is a fine novelist, but his encounter with existentialism is piecemeal and often un-understanding. He seems to reckon that just dealing with certain *themes*- death, meaninglessness, etc. makes him existential. It doesn’t. Existentialism is not just a school of plotting that looks at these things, but it also includes a very unique *way* of looking at them called *phenomenology.* Phenomenology is a research method and way of understanding human beings that is indispensible for right existential plotting. It is phenomenology that makes existential psychology *better* at understanding human beings than other psychologies, and without phenomenology, “existential psychology” is nothing more than, as Yalom himself suggests, a psychodynamic theory with a different clinical focus. This is pretty watered-down stuff, and readers would be better off reading right existential psychologists like Medard Boss, and, more recently, Louis Sass.
Rating: 2 / 5
Deep… ties together nearly all of my sustaining questions about apt a therapist. Need to read a link times I reckon.
Rating: 5 / 5
Mr. Yalom is a talented novelist and in this book, he makes this rather serious sounding theme easily understandable and fun to read. His psychotherapy is very patien-oriented and humanistic, no nonsense type. I have read several of his books including fictions, and all of them are quite poignant.
Rating: 4 / 5
I first picked up this book for a university assignment on Irvin Yalom and was amazed that I had got through an undergrad degree in psychology without hearing about him. This book is so fascinating and accessible and I immediately clicked with his thoughts and approach. Yalom comes across as very knowledgeable, explaining and challenging theories of psychology and how they support or contrast to the existential approach. He offers much matter-of-fact advice and food for plotting. The book is very enlighting for parents in regards to how children perceive and deal with death. There has not been enough written on that theme. I have nearly finished reading the book and when I do I plot to start reading it all over again.
Rating: 5 / 5
The first thing that must be said about EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOTHERAPY is that it is not merely for professionals. The books is packed with insights and intelligent thoughts for anyone with a bit of introspection. Irvin Yalom also has a very readable writing style. This should not be a surprise, as he has written both fiction and non-fiction books for the lay audience.
Yalom follows in the footsteps of Rollo May, the father of American existential therapy. May, but, did not view the existential perspective to be inconsistent with Freudianism. Indeed, May was, for years, the director of the William Alanson White Institute in New York City, a psychoanalytic institute. Yalom breaks with May on this top, establishing existential psychotherapy as a theoretical paradigm substantively distinct from psychoanalysis. Yalom does an brilliant take down of Freud in this section, re-analyzing Freud’s own case studies by the side of existential lines to exhibit that existentialism does a better job than habitual psychoanalysis of explaining certain patient’s neurosis and dysfunction.
EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOTHERAPY explores four `givens’ of existence, all of which press upon and influence our personalities, for better or worse. Of these, Yalom clearly sees the inevitability of death as the most fundamental. Several chapters of the book are devoted to man’s knowledge that, at some top, we die. And although we may have individual beliefs about what may happen after death, they are just so that – beliefs. We simply do not know if we continue past that top or not.
A second theme Yalom explores is isolation. There are several types of isolation, but, for instant purposes, the most relevant is existential isolation. No matter how close one is to another human being, no matter how many emotions or thoughts are mutual, each one of us is, ultimately, lonely. Lonely to face his own death. Lonely to take responsibility for his own life. Yalom taps into the works of various theologians for his exploration of this concept and the implications for our lives.
Next we have responsibility, which is joined at the hip from existential freedom. A distinction is drawn between existential freedom and political freedom or other types of freedom. Certainly, many aspects of our lives are not the result of free choice. At the most basic level, none of us chose to be born a particular race or sex. None of us would choose to be place into a concentration camp. But we are free to take responsibility for those choices that we have had up to this top in our lives, and we are also responsible for the stance we take towards our lives. This freedom is more psychologically deep than many people may reckon of when they reckon of responsibility. Of the four themes Yalom explores, this is probably the toughest one to really grasp.
Finally, we have meaninglessness. Life does not bestow us with its meaning (if there really is one) on a silver platter. Rather, we must hypothesis meaning itself. Of course, for many, this takes the form of religion. But a secular meaning to life is also possible. Yalom borrows heavily from psychiatrist Victor Frankl in these sections, who considered the search for meaning to be of such importance that he named his system of therapy after it. (On a correlated note, an brilliant fictional account of someone suffering from a lack of meaning in his life can be found in The Sunset Limited, a small play by Cormac McCarthy.)
EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOTHERAPY is as readable as it is plotting provoking. There are many classics to choose from in man’s exploration of the mind. This book is among the best.
Rating: 5 / 5