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The Gift of Therapy: An Open Letter to a New Generation of Therapists and Their Patients - Paperback | Diverse Reads

The Gift of Therapy: An Open Letter to a New Generation of Therapists and Their Patients

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Acclaimed author and renowned psychiatrist Irvin D. Yalom distills thirty-five years of psychotherapy wisdom into one brilliant volume.

The culmination of master psychiatrist Dr. Irvin D. Yalom's more than thirty-five years in clinical practice, The Gift of Therapy is a remarkable and essential guidebook that illustrates through real case studies how patients and therapists alike can get the most out of therapy. The bestselling author of Love's Executioner shares his uniquely fresh approach and the valuable insights he has gained--presented as eighty-five personal and provocative "tips for beginner therapists," including:

-Let the patient matter to you

-Acknowledge your errors

-Create a new therapy for each patient

-Do home visits

-(Almost) never make decisions for the patient

-Freud was not always wrong

A book aimed at enriching the therapeutic process for a new generation of patients and counselors, Yalom's Gift of Therapy is an entertaining, informative, and insightful read for anyone with an interest in the subject.


ISBN-13: 9780061719615

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Publication Date: 09-19-2017

Pages: 320

Product Dimensions: 5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.80(d)

Series: P.S. Series

Irvin D. Yalom, M.D., is the author of Love's Executioner, Momma and the Meaning of Life, Lying on the Couch, The Schopenhauer Cure, When Nietzsche Wept, as well as several classic textbooks on psychotherapy, including The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy, considered the foremost work on group therapy. The Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at Stanford University, he divides his practice between Palo Alto, where he lives, and San Francisco, California.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

Remove the Obstacles to Growth

When I was finding my way as a young psychotherapy student, the most useful book I read was Karen Horney's Neurosis and Human Growth. And the single most useful concept in that book was the notion that the human being has an inbuilt propensity toward self-realization. If obstacles are removed, Horney believed, the individual will develop into a mature, fully realized adult, just as an acorn will develop into an oak tree.

"Just as an acorn develops into an oak..." What a wonderfully liberating and clarifying image! It forever changed my approach to psychotherapy by offering me a new vision of my work: My task was to remove obstacles blocking my patient's path. I did not have to do the entire job; I did not have to inspirit the patient with the desire to grow, with curiosity, will, zest for life, caring, loyalty, or any of the myriad of characteristics that make us fully human. No, what I had to do was to identify and remove obstacles. The rest would follow automatically, fueled by the self-actualizing forces within the patient.

I remember a young widow with, as she put it, a "failed heart" -- an inability ever to love again. It felt daunting to address the inability to love. I didn't know how to do that. But dedicating myself to identifying and uprooting her many blocks to loving? I could do that.

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 asdeeply 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.

We worked hard for many months to identify all these obstacles to her loving another man. For months we wrestled with each irrational obstacle in turn. But once that was done, the patient's internal processes took over: she met a man, she fell in love, she married again. I didn't have to teach her to search, to give, to cherish, to love -- I wouldn't have known how to do that.

A few words about Karen Horney: Her name is unfamiliar to most young therapists. Because the shelf life of eminent theorists in our field has grown so short, I shall, from time to time, lapse into reminiscence -- not merely for the sake of paying homage but to emphasize the point that our field has a long history of remarkably able contributors who have laid deep foundations for our therapy work today.

One uniquely American addition to psychodynamic theory is embodied in the "neo- Freudian" movement -- a group of clinicians and theorists who reacted against Freud's original focus on drive theory, that is, the notion that the developing individual is largely controlled by the unfolding and expression of inbuilt drives.

Instead, the neo-Freudians emphasized that we consider the vast influence of the interpersonal environment that envelops the individual and that, throughout life, shapes character structure. The best-known interpersonal theorists, Harry Stack Sullivan, Erich Fromm, and Karen Horney, have been so deeply integrated and assimilated into our therapy language and practice that we are all, without knowing it, neo-Freudians. One is reminded of Monsieur Jourdain in Molière's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, who, upon learning the definition of "prose," exclaims with wonderment, "To think that all my life I've been speaking prose without knowing it."

The Gift of Therapy. Copyright © by Irvin Yalom. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

Table of Contents

Introduction xiii
Acknowledgments xxiii
Chapter 1 Remove the Obstacles to Growth 1
Chapter 2 Avoid Diagnosis (Except for Insurance Companies) 4
Chapter 3 Therapist and Patient as "Fellow Travelers" 6
Chapter 4 Engage the Patient 11
Chapter 5 Be Supportive 13
Chapter 6 Empathy: Looking Out the Patient's Window 17
Chapter 7 Teach Empathy 23
Chapter 8 Let the Patient Matter to You 26
Chapter 9 Acknowledge Your Errors 30
Chapter 10 Create a New Therapy for Each Patient 33
Chapter 11 The Therapeutic Act, Not the Therapeutic Word 37
Chapter 12 Engage in Personal Therapy 40
Chapter 13 The Therapist Has Many Patients; The Patient, One Therapist 44
Chapter 14 The Here-and-Now--Use It, Use It, Use It 46
Chapter 15 Why Use the Here-and-Now? 47
Chapter 16 Using the Here-and-Now--Grow Rabbit Ears 49
Chapter 17 Search for Here-and-Now Equivalents 52
Chapter 18 Working Through Issues in the Here-and-Now 58
Chapter 19 The Here-and-Now Energizes Therapy 62
Chapter 20 Use Your Own Feelings as Data 65
Chapter 21 Frame Here-and-Now Comments Carefully 68
Chapter 22 All Is Grist for the Here-and-Now Mill 70
Chapter 23 Check into the Here-and-Now Each Hour 72
Chapter 24 What Lies Have You Told Me? 74
Chapter 25 Blank Screen? Forget It! Be Real 75
Chapter 26 Three Kinds of Therapist Self-Disclosure 83
Chapter 27 The Mechanism of Therapy--Be Transparent 84
Chapter 28 Revealing Here-and-Now Feelings--Use Discretion 87
Chapter 29 Revealing the Therapist's Personal Life--Use Caution 90
Chapter 30 Revealing Your Personal Life--Caveats 94
Chapter 31 Therapist Transparency and Universality 97
Chapter 32 Patients Will Resist Your Disclosure 99
Chapter 33 Avoid the Crooked Cure 102
Chapter 34 On Taking Patients Further Than You Have Gone 104
Chapter 35 On Being Helped by Your Patient 106
Chapter 36 Encourage Patient Self-Disclosure 109
Chapter 37 Feedback in Psychotherapy 112
Chapter 38 Provide Feedback Effectively and Gently 115
Chapter 39 Increase Receptiveness to Feedback by Using "Parts" 119
Chapter 40 Feedback: Strike When the Iron Is Cold 121
Chapter 41 Talk About Death 124
Chapter 42 Death and Life Enhancement 126
Chapter 43 How to Talk About Death 129
Chapter 44 Talk About Life Meaning 133
Chapter 45 Freedom 137
Chapter 46 Helping Patients Assume Responsibility 139
Chapter 47 Never (Almost Never) Make Decisions for the Patient 142
Chapter 48 Decisions: A Via Regia into Existential Bedrock 146
Chapter 49 Focus on Resistance to Decision 148
Chapter 50 Facilitating Awareness by Advice Giving 150
Chapter 51 Facilitating Decisions--Other Devices 155
Chapter 52 Conduct Therapy as a Continuous Session 158
Chapter 53 Take Notes of Each Session 160
Chapter 54 Encourage Self-Monitoring 162
Chapter 55 When Your Patient Weeps 164
Chapter 56 Give Yourself Time Between Patients 166
Chapter 57 Express Your Dilemmas Openly 168
Chapter 58 Do Home Visits 171
Chapter 59 Don't Take Explanation Too Seriously 174
Chapter 60 Therapy-Accelerating Devices 179
Chapter 61 Therapy as a Dress Rehearsal for Life 182
Chapter 62 Use the Initial Complaint as Leverage 184
Chapter 63 Don't Be Afraid of Touching Your Patient 187
Chapter 64 Never Be Sexual with Patients 191
Chapter 65 Look for Anniversary and Life-Stage Issues 195
Chapter 66 Never Ignore "Therapy Anxiety" 197
Chapter 67 Doctor, Take Away My Anxiety 200
Chapter 68 On Being Love's Executioner 201
Chapter 69 Taking a History 206
Chapter 70 A History of the Patient's Daily Schedule 208
Chapter 71 How Is the Patient's Life Peopled? 210
Chapter 72 Interview the Significant Other 211
Chapter 73 Explore Previous Therapy 213
Chapter 74 Sharing the Shade of the Shadow 215
Chapter 75 Freud Was Not Always Wrong 217
Chapter 76 CBT Is Not What It's Cracked Up to Be ... Or, Don't Be Afraid of the EVT Boogeyman 222
Chapter 77 Dreams--Use Them, Use Them, Use Them 225
Chapter 78 Full Interpretation of a Dream? Forget It! 227
Chapter 79 Use Dreams Pragmatically: Pillage and Loot 228
Chapter 80 Master Some Dream Navigational Skills 235
Chapter 81 Learn About the Patient's Life from Dreams 238
Chapter 82 Pay Attention to the First Dream 243
Chapter 83 Attend Carefully to Dreams About the Therapist 246
Chapter 84 Beware the Occupational Hazards 251
Chapter 85 Cherish the Occupational Privileges 256
Notes 261