Love’s Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy

5 Responses to “Love’s Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy”

1. Anonymous says:

   May 28, 2010 at 1:26 pm

   This is very pessimist book. Very trying to read. With no past therapy experience on any Therapist couch, I felt terrified with the experiences of the Therapists, not to name patients. From time to time, I feel that this is a profession of the affluent only, and the people on the other side of the equator, are luck that they do not have that much money to spend but pray God, in order to keep themselves sane, which is much cheaper. Price of the book is just a fraction of cost of one hour on the couch, so that book reading is much more realistic.
   Rating: 4 / 5
2. Joseph Riggio says:

   May 28, 2010 at 3:26 pm

   For those of you with small time I’ll get aptly to it – Yalom’s a fantastic novelist, probably a excellent researcher and a lousy therapist – all by my sole attitude and the evidence of one book of reading by the guy, and his bibliography. The book is engaging, there are moments of brilliance that emerge in his work with patients (trust me these are patient folks …) and even some fascinating aspect of reading Yalom’s revelations which account for the greatest part of the book. Simply place this is as another reviewer on Amazon’s website place it, “an intellectual masturbatory confessional.”

   This guy (Yalom) is on with himself. He is one of the most self-vital characters I’ve ever come across in my reading. He has the typical “Graves Six Type” penchant for revelation, pleasure-seeking and the projection of caring about – and in this case even for – others. The reality is more like he’s all about making sure he’s okay with what’s going on at every moment in his tale. His patient’s therapy is his opportunity to get paid for doing his own private development. Two pieces of evidence for me: One his long diatribe on how “countertransference” is for the shrink what “balance’ is for the ballet dancer. His take on countertransference is the shrink’s inability to get out their own way in the therapy and their need to work on this – in Yalom’s case at least at the expense (literally) of the patient. Two, is his constant internal revelations about how he’s experiencing the patient’s therapy, about his sense of pleasure or ease or satisfaction in doing therapy with this particular patient or another. This guy is off with himself!!! What a hedonistic fool … in the classical sense of fool.

   But, there is a redeeming quality to this book and a reason to read it in my attitude. It is an brilliant example of why more “habitual” forms of psychotherapy (the “fifty minute” hour type spread over twenty of so years …) has fallen off, and it’s not the “fault” of HMOs and PPOs despite what these professionals want to claim and their endless lament that the world’s not honest (to them or to their patients – of course without their patients how would they entertain themselves and know they are okay in the world?) especially in the face of competition from “newer” human development technology. It is also, again in my attitude, an brilliant primer in some of what NOT TO DO in helping others. What’s described is how Yalom so often takes months of his patient’s time getting to meaningful work with them, often taking months just to build a apposite level of rapport to do the work the patient requires and desires … what they are paying him for specifically. He so often describes taking this time because he doesn’t want to hurt the patient’s feelings or have them reckon terribly of him … This guy’s supposed to be a professional therapist, not only that but one of the best of the best … and his concern is that he’s too incompetent to get his result without hurting his patient’s feelings or that they might not reckon well of him. What’s worse is that this guy teaches and supervises other student therapists.

   The most egregious show of incompetence you can learn from here is how simple it may possibly be for those so inclined to make this work of helping others into a form of working on themselves … and endlessly so. I am of the attitude that although the healer is also human, and that this humanness is a powerful force in being of help to others, that the work done with others is NOT THE PLACE for doing one’s own work … whatever that might be.

   Finally, after making sure he’s okay, having fun and that his patient’s reckon well of him he starts the actual work with them often only getting to the “remedy” in the last few weeks of months of preparatory therapy. What I know from both professional experience and education is that this kind of transformational work can be accomplished often in the first session with a client. But, I must also say again that I am not a shrink, not trained in psychotherapy … and maybe this is ultimately what I learned most from Yalom – I don’t need to be one nor do I want to be one … if this is the result I may possibly guess in being one, kind of like the purple cow of professions … if Yalom’s descriptions can indeed be held as the template of what psychotherapy is about and what psychotherapists are actully like in the privacy of their own thoughts.

   In the end there are other examples of “doing therapy” in literature that are much better examples of what can be accomplished by a highly trained individual who less concerned about what he’s thought and what his “patients” reckon of him than in tender their patients/clients lives forward. Just do a search below brief therapy or solution-oriented therapy and you’ll get a list of suggestions there to start. If your penchant is for “deep” therapy, which you judge requires months or years to get to there are also those therapists doing that kind of work without the need to hold the patient/client in place as a kind of manikin for themselves and their own work. I’d urge “The Case of Nora” by Moshe Feldenkris as a fantastic piece of therapy literature as an example of the kind of work that is possible with a client in the hands and mind of a master therapist.
   Rating: 3 / 5
3. editorial goddess says:

   May 28, 2010 at 3:45 pm

   i’ve read dr. yalom’s book twice now. i couldn’t agree more with the other reviewers who are taken aback by his disgust for his patients. different reviewers accepted his “bravery,” but i, as a humanist and also someone in the medical profession, reckon he uses his book nearly as anintellectually masturbatory confessional.

   i have everlastingly been stout and though it is “nice” to know the truth of the contempt that many people hold for stout people, it is trying to read this appearance from a shrink who uses his hefty patient only, it seems, to massage his psyche. i guess more. i guess compassion, empathy, MATURITY, and the ability to accept and even delight in people’s differences. yalom missed the boat here. i wouldn’t pay him a dime for analysis. there are so many better, more mature, less projecting, less narcissistic therapists out there. nu, you’ve been warned!
   Rating: 1 / 5
4. Anonymous says:

   May 28, 2010 at 5:08 pm

   i readed 3 books, and really ideollogicaly i agree with yalom’s work, i also want to establish a connection with him, cause i work with people who where in terrorists attacs and i had experience i want to share with him, about parents who lost their children , or survivers, specially at the Israely embassy and jwesh community focal top in argentina 1992 and 1994.
   Rating: 5 / 5
5. happypup says:

   May 28, 2010 at 7:35 pm

   This book does describe the therapists clinical encounters and, in nearly scary detail, his own private thoughts. I say ’scary’ as nearly every encounter with a female patient is about how this married therapist fantasizes about her! The analyses of the other patients is also kind of weird – one patient regrets not having children and has a dream where he meets a daughter he never had. Dr Yalom interprets this as the patient meeting his “female side” and wanting to be in greater touch with it (!?). I’m no therapist but I would have plotting the more evident interpretation was that it was correlated to his regret about not having children…….the only reason I can see in buying this book is that the cover price is small compared to even one of Dr Yaloms therapy sessions – and reading the book may place you off ever bothering wasting your money on consulting this therapist.
   Rating: 1 / 5