Existential Psychotherapy

Rating:
Summary: A Good Reminder
Review: Existential Psychotherapy is a convincing and moving reminder of the vagaries of life and the dignity with which we might respond to them. It's a hopeful exploration of death, separation, fantasies of rescue and regression, and the impossibility of transcending our earthly limitations.

Yalom writes with clarity and compassion. By reminding us of the timeless and undeniable, Yalom grounds us, gives us a foundation to begin building a more realistic version of our lives upon. Well done.

Rating:
Summary: A Good Reminder
Review: I credit Dr. Yalom with having written the most insightful treatise on human behaviour ever published. If I was to have a last dying wish and asked to finally be let in on the secrets of life -- I would not be disappointed if this was what was given to me. It has changed my living of each nanosecond.

Rating:
Summary: Simply Astonishing
Review: I credit Dr. Yalom with having written the most insightful treatise on human behaviour ever published. If I was to have a last dying wish and asked to finally be let in on the secrets of life -- I would not be disappointed if this was what was given to me. It has changed my living of each nanosecond.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent book! Makes mid-life crisis understandable.
Review: Quenches a thirst for understanding during a time of life that demands introspection. Yalom's writing style is easily understood, and his statements are backed up with examples to drive home his point. An excellent piece of work!

Rating:
Summary: Simply great stuff!
Review: This book is a very enriching and expanding experience, not only for the person reading the book, but also for the people around the reader, as you simply can't help discussing the themes with friends and family. It is admirable how Yalom treats the subject without neither moral judgement nor dogmatic lecturing, opening a challenging universe, leaving it to the reader to find his or her own way through the chaos of life. Compulsory reading for anyone interested in psychology, philosophy or simply oneself and other human beings.

Rating:
Summary: Worth every cent and syllable
Review: While Yalom's novels captivated me and "Love's Executioner" would not let me go, this book is the heart of Yalom's genious. I learned more psychology through the reading of this text than I learned in my undergraduate degree in psychology. Get it. You'll be satisfied.

Rating:
Summary: an insight to the soul of man
Review: within the space of a lifetime, ugly realities inevitably arise in both our outer and inner worlds. i have tended to accept this and assume there are not any answers, only more troubling truths. yalom's book explores this risky terrain with a brilliance and lucidity that i had not thought possible. i read this over two years ago, i have read it again in pieces many times since then. it would not be an exageration to say it has changed my life. i have often thought that god's secret instruction book has been revealed to the struggling human species and am grateful to live in a place and time that i could glimpse into the ummeasurable profound.

Rating:
Summary: Yalom's diluted existentialism
Review: Yalom is a fine writer, but his encounter with existentialism is piecemeal and often un-understanding. He seems to think that just dealing with certain *themes*- death, meaninglessness, etc. makes him existential. It doesn't. Existentialism is not just a school of thought that looks at these things, but it also includes a very special *way* of looking at them called *phenomenology.* Phenomenology is a research method and way of understanding human beings that is indispensible for true existential thought. It is phenomenology that makes existential psychology *better* at understanding human beings than other psychologies, and without phenomenology, "existential psychology" is nothing more than, as Yalom himself suggests, a psychodynamic theory with a different clinical focus. This is pretty watered-down stuff, and readers would be better off reading true existential psychologists like Medard Boss, and, more recently, Louis Sass.

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding: Should be required reading
Review: Yalom's book contains a unique interpretation and presentation of common behaviors, such that these behaviors can be seen as a response to existential dilemma's... As a layperson, I found it extremely enriching, and very accessible. It should be required reading for anyone in the profession (and is probably Yalom's magnum opus?)