Love's Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy

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At a conference approximately two years prior to meeting Thelma, I had encountered a woman who subsequently invaded my mind, my thoughts, my dreams. Her image took up housekeeping in my mind and defied all my efforts to dislodge it. But, for a time, that was all right: I liked the obsession and savored it afresh again and again. A few weeks later, I went on a week’s vacation with my family to a beautiful Caribbean island. It was only after several days that I realized I was missing everything on the trip—the beauty of the beach, the lush and exotic vegetation, even the thrill of snorkeling and entering the underwater world. All this rich reality had been blotted out by my obsession. I had been absent. I had been encased in my mind, watching replays over and over again of the same and, by then, pointless fantasy. Anxious and thoroughly fed up with myself, I entered therapy (yet again), and after several hard months, my mind was my own again and I was able to return to the exciting business of experiencing my life as it was happening.” I do not like to work with patients who are in love. Perhaps it is because of envy—I, too, crave enchantment. Perhaps it is because love and psychotherapy are fundamentally incompatible. The good therapist fights darkness and seeks illumination, while romantic love is sustained by mystery and crumbles upon inspection. I hate to be love’s executioner. (c) Opening the book, he then read the following passage from the Preface: "Four givens are particularly relevant for psycho-therapy: the inevitability of death for each of us and for those we love; the freedom to make our lives as we will; our ultimate aloneness; and, finally, the absence of any obvious meaning or sense to life." Yalom is duplicitous and self aggrandizing, his writing screams contempt and distain for all but his most attractive female patients.

These stories are wonderful. They make us realize that within every human being lie the pain and the beauty that make life worthwhile' Bernie S. Siegel Irvin D. Yalom is Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the Stanford University School of Medicine. As well as an award-winning psychiatrist and psychotherapist, he is an extremely prolific author. His many other works include The Gift of Therapy, Staring at the Sun, When Nietzsche Wept, The Theory and Practice of Group Psychiatry, The Schopenhauer Cure, Lying on the Couch, Momma and the Meaning of Life, Existential Psychotherapy, I'm Calling the Police, Inpatient Group Psychotherapy, Every Day Gets a Little Closer and The Spinoza Problem. Our academic experts are ready and waiting to assist with any writing project you may have. From simple essay plans, through to full dissertations, you can guarantee we have a service perfectly matched to your needs. View our services It's genuinely disappointing, because Yalom is a huge part of my therapy home. His ideas - the idea that therapy is a relationship (and works for that very reason), that authenticity and genuineness are key... these are the things I learned from reading his books and seeing him speak when I was a brand new baby therapist. At the same time his writing, when keeping to the trail of his client's problems is compelling and insightful.

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Book Genre: Autobiography, Counselling, Health, Medicine, Memoir, Mental Health, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Psychiatry, Psychology, Science, Short Stories, Social Science, Social Work Yalom has continued to maintain a part-time private practice and has authored a number of video documentaries on therapeutic techniques. Yalom is also featured in the 2003 documentary Flight from Death, a film that investigates the relationship of human violence to fear of death, as related to subconscious influences. The Irvin D. Yalom Institute of Psychotherapy, which he co-directs with Professor Ruthellen Josselson, works to advance Yalom's approach to psychotherapy. This unique combination of integrating more philosophy into the psychotherapy can be considered as psychosophy. Jalem, Helmut & Schutz, Peter. Neuro-Linguistic Psychotherapy (NLPt). http://www.nlpzentrum.at/nlptarteng.html

Perhaps the function of the obsession was simply to provide intimacy: it bonded her to another—but not to a real person, to a fantasy.” Even after finishing this book a few months ago, this fat-lady-case is still on my mind from time to time. Reading about these ten psychotherapeutic cases was interesting ; the repeated denigratory comments on his patients however were often painful to read. In view of theoretical concept, Asaf Rolef Ben-Shahar explained the differences between the two therapies in terms of presupposition. According to him, the understanding underlying psychoanalytic theory is that “cure happens through bringing unconscious material into consciousness” (Sharar, par. 2), in which according to the author, unconscious forces are often bad or negative that results or poses danger to the integrity of a person. On the other hand, in Neuro-linguistic psychotherapy, curing through understanding is possible but not necessary (Sharar, par. 3). He explained that the legitimate processes in this kind of therapy require insight-based strategies and transference-interpretations and analyses which also serve as the only tools of this therapy. Thus, he stated that the main concern of psychoanalysis is finding the cause or simply answering the question why, while the nuero-linguistic psychotherapy is finding the right method among choices or simply answering the question how. Feltham, Colin & Horton, Ian (compiler) 2006. The Sage Handbook of Counseling and Psychotherapy. USA: Sage Publications For those interested in learning more about psychotherapy, and those curious about the therapeutic process itself, this is a must read. Even for the general reader with little interest in psychotherapy, the human stories here are completely absorbing. This is a book about humanity, about finding meaning in seemingly hopeless situations. It will stay with me for a long, long time.

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Jo Cooper and Peter Seal in their article in the Sage Handbook of Counselling and Psychotherapy said that Neuro-linguistic Psychotherapy is “not in itself a therapy but can be used therapeutically and can be remarkably effective” (Cooper and Seal as cited in Feltham and Horton, p. 329), because it has some components and methodology that are proven efficient especially in dealing with patients. Thus, it is still significant to relate the fundamental concept of existential psychoanalysis in dealing with patients associate with the neuro-linguistic psychotherapy. Existential model of psychoanalysis as explained by Ben L. Thomas, Sally Hardy, and Penny Cutting, focuses on the person’s experience in here and now with much less importance of the person’s past (p. 25), and as per existentialists are concerned, they believe that people despite of so many choices to choose, people tend to avoid being real which made them to offer in to other people’s demand. In the same way, in the rationalization pertaining to psychoanalysis, most of deviant or disrupted behaviours of adults are traced in their childhood as explained in psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud. Thus, to summarize the concept of existentialism and psychoanalysis, the authors presented a common idea that can help patients. Psychoanalysis theory believes that “objective observation of human behaviour was a great contribution of the psychoanalyst, as was the identification of a mental structure (Thomas, Hardy and Cutting, p. 21). On the other hand, existential therapeutic processes “focus on the encounter” (p. 25); this encounter according to the authors is the meeting of two or more persons and appreciation of the total existence of each other, which is a great help to the person concerned to accept and understand his or her experiences in the past and to live fully in the present (p. 25). A friend gave me this book a few days ago. My friend is very well-educated, has lived all over the world, and has experienced more than most people. When he gave me the book, he said to me, "This book reflects my vision of the world". I’m going to put forward an argument from the view point of both the client “Thelma” and the therapist “Yalom” that the therapeutic process and therapeutic alliance may or may not have worked. You, the reader can make up your own mind.

I loved Love's Executioner. Dr Yalom has learned something that fiction writers learned years ago - that people's mistakes are a lot more interesting than their triumphs' Joanne Greenberg In addition to his scholarly, non-fiction writing, Yalom has produced a number of novels and also experimented with writing techniques. In Every Day Gets a Little Closer Yalom invited a patient to co-write about the experience of therapy. The book has two distinct voices which are looking at the same experience in alternating sections. Yalom's works have been used as collegiate textbooks and standard reading for psychology students. His new and unique view of the patient/client relationship has been added to curriculum in psychology programs at such schools as John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. According to Chilley Sterman, NLP (neurolinguistic psychotherapy) is “a system model which is directed to changing behavior by identifying existing patterns and intervening through sensory modes, verbally and non-verbally in working with the conscious and unconscious process of the client” (Sterman, p. 29). Sterman noted that the task of the therapist in the NLP is to “work with the client in identifying problem behaviors and desired outcomes or goals expanding the repertoire of available choices.When Yalom first met Thelma, he disregarded 20 years of experience/evidence at the outset that Thelma was a poor candidate for psychotherapy. He may have ignored his “hunch” not to treat Thelma because she did present to him in crises and he wanted to help her as she was so vulnerable. It’s important to note that all clients are vulnerable when they embark on therapy. This hunch Yalom had does seem like a negative at the onset.