I'd like to mention in particular one story that started off the collection on a bang for me with Thelma, “a depressed, suicidal, seventy-year-old woman,” who for the past eight years “could not relinquish her obsessive love for a man thirty-five years younger.” The book is a compilation of ten case studies of ten patients, although some patients do pop up in more than one place. Each has a unique problem, ranging from the insufferable Carlos, dying of cancer but hoping to nail every woman he sees, to Thelma, with her obsession with a month-long fling she had eight years prior, to the obese Betty (here the disgust is palpable). Their stories are all compelling, in the same way that true crime books are compelling: we can relate to the victims - they're just normal people - but it's still the kind of thing that we love to read about but never live through.

Oskar Pfister Award for important contributions to religion and psychiatry by the American Psychiatric Foundation/ American Psychiatric Association [6] [7]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 Last year I started seeing a therapist for the first time in my life, although not by deliberate choice but rather as a side benefit of something else -- namely, I attended one of those "computer coding bootcamp" programs here in Chicago, and one of the things they provide for their students for no cost is a licensed therapist on staff for weekly sessions. I ended up responding so well to the process, though, that I've continued seeing her in private practice ever since.

Anthony Bateman, Jonathan Pedder and Dennis Brown noted that psychodynamic is based on the provision of a setting in which a person may begin to reconcile with this disowned aspects of himself, his experience (Bateman, Pedder and Brown, p. 63). They pointed out that the setting for this process is the relationship with the therapist, which without it, psychodynamic therapy cannot begin. They confirmed Cohn’s findings that dynamic psychotherapy had begun with Freud and psychoanalysis (p. 96), which utilizes three different meanings and functions. First, it is technique for investigating unconscious psychic life; second, it refers to theoretical body of knowledge built up on the basis of such observations; and third, it is used to describe an intense method of psychotherapeutic treatment. I was easily swept away into the pensive and therapeutic writing style. It offered an introspective look into moments not many of us get to see represented. The book also had many noteworthy lines that left an imprint on me, such as: Yalom was born in Washington, D.C. [1] About fifteen years prior to his birth in the United States, Yalom's Jewish parents emigrated from Russia (though their country of origin was Poland or Belarus) and eventually opened a grocery store in Washington DC. Yalom spent much of his childhood reading books in the family home above the grocery store and in a local library. After graduating from high school, he attended George Washington University and then Boston University School of Medicine.After graduating with a BA from George Washington University in 1952 and a Doctor of Medicine from Boston University School of Medicine in 1956 he went on to complete his internship at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York and his residency at the Phipps Clinic of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and completed his training in 1960. After two years of Army service at Tripler General Hospital in Honolulu, Yalom began his academic career at Stanford University. He was appointed to the faculty in 1963 and promoted over the following years, being granted tenure in 1968. Soon after this period he made some of his most lasting contributions by teaching about group psychotherapy and developing his model of existential psychotherapy. While some of those concepts might sound cliche - "how we must construct meaning," "assume responsibility for the course of our lives," "accept and conquer our fear of death" - Yalom presents them in fascinating, complex, and unpretentious ways. He examines his clients with an insightful lens, treats them like humans in an understanding and open relationship, and uses skilled therapeutic techniques to provoke insight and growth. Not all of his stories end on a clean note, and their ambiguous resolutions exemplify the complex and bumpy nature of therapy, similar to the convoluted quality of humans themselves.

The Gift of Therapy: An Open Letter to a New Generation of Therapists and Their Patients [14] ISBN 0-066-21440-8

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. 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." I had originally started Irvin D. Yalom's newest release Becoming Myself, where he mentioned this collection of stories which sounded more fitting because my attention span was slight at the time. 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.”(from the opening of the title story)

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.” DISCUSS THE THERAPEUTIC PROCESS AND THERAPEUTICALLIANCEAS CASE STUDIEDINN IRVIN YALOM’S LOVE’S EXECUTIONER. IS THE THERAPY WORKING? EXPLAIN. You know, there is no one alive now who was grown-up when I was a child. So I, as a child, am dead. Some day soon, perhaps in forty years, there will be no one alive who has ever known me. That’s when I will be truly dead—when I exist in no one’s memory. I thought a lot about how someone very old is the last living individual to have known some person or cluster of people. When that old person dies, the whole cluster dies, too, vanishes from living memory. I wonder who that person will be for me. Whose death will make me truly dead?” Commonwealth Club Gold Award for fiction best novel ( When Nietzsche Wept) by The Commonwealth Club of California [5]

Jalem, Helmut & Schutz, Peter. Neuro-Linguistic Psychotherapy (NLPt). http://www.nlpzentrum.at/nlptarteng.html Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2012-05-14 05:28:30 Bookplateleaf 0006 Boxid IA178501 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II City New York Donor Psichinė sveikata -