Gift of Therapy, The: An Open Letter to a New Generation of Therapists and Their Patients (P.S.)

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You’re free to make a decision, but that usually means not making some other decision which means that you’re willingly cutting yourself off from other possibilities. It was quite a journey! I savoured every word Irv wrote and what he wrote is so touching that one can hardly explain the feelings he elicits in oneself, especially in the young generations of Psychology field. First published in 2001 – sometime around the author’s 70 th birthday – The Gift of Therapy, as stated by its blurb, is “the culmination of master psychiatrist Dr. Irvin D. Yalom’s more than forty-five years in clinical practice.”

Having reached his 70th year, Yalom (psychiatry, Stanford U.) worries about where the next generation of effective psychotherapists will be trained, noting that the big medical corporations are primarily interested in pushing medicine. He advises students against sectarianism and suggests a therapeutic pluralism in which effective interventions are drawn from several different therapy approaches. He does not include an index. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)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 Patient difficulties can disrupt life: relationship strains, child rearing stresses, bereavement, marital discord, illnesses, etc. My patients do not let me forget that I grow old. But they are only doing their job: have I not asked them to disclose all feelings, thoughts, and dreams? Even potential new patients join the chorus and, without fail, greet me with the question: “are you stilltaking on patients?” Pamenu, tuomkart paliko didelį įspūdį kaip sklandus praktiškų patarimų ir įžvalgų rinkinys, bet įtariu, kad šįkart iš knygos pasiėmiau gerokai daugiau.

And yet, Yalom concludes, if not only because of this endangered species (or exactly because there are so few of them), it makes sense to write a book such as The Gift of Therapy. Existential and Group Therapy In early youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we are like children in a theater before the curtain is raised, sitting there in high spirits and eagerly waiting for the play to begin. It is a blessing that we do not know what is really going to happen. Could we foresee it, there are times when children might seem like condemned prisoners, condemned, not to death, but to life, and as yet all unconscious of what their sentence means. Therapist and Patient as "Fellow Travelers" Andrè Malraux, the French novelist, described a country priest who had taken confession for many decades and summed up what he had learned about human nature in this manner: "First of all, people are much more unhappy than one thinks...and there is no such thing as a grown-up person." Everyone—and that includes therapists as well as patients—is destined to experience not only the exhilaration of life, but also its inevitable darkness: disillusionment, aging, illness, isolation, loss, meaninglessness, painful choices, and death. The psychology of decision making is also glanced upon since it is another boundary experience, located somewhere between freedom and death. Life as a therapist is a life of service in which we daily transcend our personal wishes and turn our gaze toward the needs and growth of the other. We take pleasure not only in the growth of our patient but also in the ripple effect—the salutary influence our patients have upon those whom they touch in life.”My patients’ dreams have changed. Cobwebs fill my hat. My office is dark and deserted. I am nowhere to be found. The former is reserved for individuals and is “a dynamic therapeutic approach that focuses on concerns rooted in existence;” it is based on the assumption that despair is the result of a personal confrontation with the givens of existence. Now that you have understood the theoretical definition of existential therapy, it’s time that you understand a bit better how it works in practice. It doesn’t matter if one finds meaning; what matters is the engagement in the pursuit; and therapists need to remove all isolation-creating obstacles to this engagement. I didn't understand that asking patients to be your therapist, analyzing their dreams, trying to be their friend, insisting that the patient-therapist relationship resembles all the rest of the patient's relationships, insisting that there's always an interpersonal conflict with a subconscious nature that is at the roots of one's emotional disturbance, using your own feelings about the client as a compass, etc. could serve a therapeutic purpose.

Certainly helpful to therapists and patients, may also help any thoughtful person seeking to improve relationships with others and self-understanding. BooklistAfter 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. 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. A heightened sensibility to existential issues deeply influences the nature of the relationship of the therapist and patient and affects every therapy session. My patients’ dreams have changed. Cobwebs fill my hat. My office is dark and deserted. I am nowhere to be found…