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

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It is daunting to realize that I am entering a designated later era of life,” writes one of America’s leading psychotherapists, Irvin D. Yalom, at the beginning of The Gift of Therapy. 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. Yalom understands freedom in the way most existential philosophers understand it: as a way of assuming responsibility for your life in a chaotic, unstructured world. In the therapeutic enterprise we must tread a fine line between some, but not too much, objectivity; if we take the DSM diagnostic system too seriously, if we really believe we are truly carving at the joints of nature, then we may threaten the human, the spontaneous, the creative and uncertain nature of the therapeutic venture. Remember that the clinicians involved in formulating previous, now discarded, diagnostic systems were competent, proud, and just as confident as the current members of DSM committees. Undoubtedly the time will come when the DSM-IV Chinese restaurant menu format will appear ludicrous to mental health professionals.

Beginning therapists must learn that there are times to sit in silence, sometimes in silent communion, sometimes simply while waiting for patients' thoughts to appear in a form that they may be expressed.”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. Ontologic mode : Focused on being – Filled with wonderment that things are.Existing in ontologic mode provides a state of readiness for change.

Heidegger spoke of two modes of existence: the everyday mode and the ontological mode. In the everyday mode we are consumed with and distracted by material surroundings - we are filled with wonderment about how things are in the world. In the ontological mode we are focused on being per se - that is, we are filled with wonderment that things are in the world.” He has written as many fiction as non-fiction books, the most famous of which, When Nietzsche Wept, was adapted into a movie in 2007. I soon learned that love felt treasonous to her. To love another was to betray her dead husband; it felt to her like pounding the final nails in her husband's coffin. To love another as deeply as she did her husband (and she would settle for nothing less) meant that her love for her husband had been in some way insufficient or flawed. To love another would be self-destructive because loss, and the searing pain of loss, was inevitable. To love again felt irresponsible: she was evil and jinxed, and her kiss was the kiss of death. Dr. Yalom draws on his 45 years of clinical practice and comes up with a collection of his most passionate categories of interest.In this book he attempts to gift to the new generation of therapists his pearls of wisdom from those years by selecting 85 categories of subjects that come up in a therapy practice and elaborating on his successful interventions in these areas.These two are parallel interests, but, nevertheless, they are also separate: as Yalom says, just as there can be no group therapy for one person, there’s also no such thing as existential group therapy. Rainer Maria Rilke’s ghost hovered over the writing of this volume. Shortly before my experience in the Huntington library, I had reread his Letters to a Young Poetand I consciously attempted raise myself to his standards of honesty, inclusiveness, and generosity of spirit.

In the “Introduction,” Yalom provides a tentative structure of his book; naturally, we’ll try to follow it in our summary. Introduction Anxieties and WorriesA 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. Hesse's tale has always moved me in a preternatural way. It strikes me as a deeply illuminating statement about giving and receiving help, about honesty and duplicity, and about the relationship between healer and patient. The two men received powerful help but in very different ways. The younger healer was nurtured, nursed, taught, mentored, and parented. The older healer, on the other hand, was helped through serving another, through obtaining a disciple from whom he received filial love, respect, and salve for his isolation. Yalom writes with the narrative wit of O. Henry and the earthy humor of Isaac Bashevis Singer. San Francisco Chronicle But observe these same sessions for some characteristic processderiving from an existential orientation and one will encounter another story entirely. A heightened sensibility to existential issues deeply influences the nature of the relationship of the therapist and patient and affects every single therapy session.

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?” I admired especially the humanity and humility which shine through this book....I would recommend this book to anyone but especially to those open to learning with the heart as well as the head. E. Thomas Dowd 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. The Gift of Therapy has 85 short chapters, each offering a suggestion or tip for therapy. The first three chapters are reproduced here.

v Let patients’ matter to you: Let them enter your mind, change you and don’t conceal this from them. Now that he was dying, the hour had come, Dion told Joseph, to break his silence about that miracle. Dion confessed that at the time it had seemed a miracle to him as well, for he, too, had fallen into despair. He, too, felt empty and spiritually dead and, unable to help himself, had set off on a journey to seek help. On the very night that they had met at the oasis he was on a pilgrimage to a famous healer named Joseph.