A review by jcschildbach
Love's Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy by Irvin D. Yalom

4.0

It's been years since I've read any Yalom, and I've got to say it's a bit strange to read a book about therapy that's not a kind of "I was lost, but now I'm found" situation, or a super-positive "therapy is great!" book. What I mean by that is that a lot of the books out there now are in this realm of how psychology and therapy has super-positive impacts and everything about therapy leads in the right direction, or they are stories about how people came to be super-positive therapists after going through their own trials and tribulations. Yalom, in a much different vein, tells about what it's like to actually be a therapist, dealing with real clients, and having all manner of reactions to them, from thinking that a particular response or direction in therapy was a big mistake, to feeling relief that a particular response or direction didn't turn out to be a mistake, to other (non-therapist) 'human' reactions, like recognizing that certain clients will be annoying or frustrating or attractive, or...well, the same kinds of things you feel about people you encounter in general. It's so refreshing to read a book by someone 'in the field' who is not trying to gloss over all the weirdness, errors, and uncertainty that can go on in therapy.