My Book Reviews

In this post I should like to review the following books by Irvin D. Yalom, M.D., psychiatrist and psychotherapist which have a pride of place on my shelves:  My copies of the books reviewed here. 1. Every Day Gets A Little Closer: A Twice-Told Therapy, (with Ginny Elkin), New York:      Basic Books, 1974. 2.   Existential Psychotherapy, New York: Basic Books, 1980. 3.  Love's Executioner & Other Tales of Psychotherapy, London: Penguin Books, 1991. 4. When Nietzsche Wept: A Novel of Obsession, New York:   Harper Perennial, 1992, 2003 5.  Lying on The Couch, New York: Harper Collins, 1996. 6.  The Yalom Reader: Selections from the Work of a Master Therapist & Storyteller, Edited by Ben  Yalom, New York: Basic Books, 1998. 7.  Momma and the Meaning of Life: Tales of Psychotherapy,  London: Piatkus, 1999. 8. The Gift of Therapy: Reflections on being a Therapist, London, ...

Introduction The two books I am reviewing here Freud famously said that the goal of psychoanalysis was the making of the unconscious conscious, and he went on further to state elsewhere that "dreams are the Royal Road to the Unconscious." Now, needless to say, we must remember that Freud did not suddenly discover the Unconscious. Rather the Unconscious was always known to be there through its manifestations mostly in evil doings and the consequences thereof. Over the centuries writers have struggled with representing the Unconscious realm from the era of the great Greek tragedians like Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides right up through all the struggles of civilization with this topic in religion, art and literature. What Freud did was to throw the spotlight on it, to examine it, to bring it to the forefront of humankind's concerns, to describe it, to sketch out, in however tentative a way, its structure.   In short, he popularised the Unconscious.  My psy...

The previous post in this sequence can be accessed here:   Clutch 2 . Books Reviewed Here : (i)  House and Philosophy: Everybody Lies,  ed. Henry Jacoby (2009), New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. (ii)  A History of Ideas,  Kevin O'Donnell (2003), Oxford: Lion Access Guides. (iii)  Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy,  Simon Blackburn (2001), Oxford: OUP. (iv) T he Age of Absurdity: Why modern life makes it hard to be happy,  Michael Foley (2010), London & New York: Simon & Schuster. (v)  What Do We Really Know: The Big Questions of Philosophy,  Simon Blackburn (2009), London: Quercus. My copies of the books reviewed here Introduction I have long been convinced of the truth of the Nobel Laureate for Physics Richard Feynman's contention that he'd rather have "questions that cannot be answered rather than answers that cannot be questioned."  There is much good philosophy in that state...