Writing the Talking Cure: Irvin D. Yalom and the Literature of Psychotherapy

Jeffrey Berman

05/2019 · State University of New York Press

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A distinguished psychiatrist and psychotherapist, Irvin D. Yalom is also the United States' most well-known author of psychotherapy tales. His first volume of essays, Love's Executioner, became an immediate best seller, and his first novel, When Nietzsche Wept, continues to enjoy critical and popular success. Yalom has created a subgenre of literature, the "therapy story," where the therapist learns as much as, if not more than, the patient; where therapy never proceeds as expected; and where the therapist's apparent failure provesultimately to be a success.

Writing the Talking Cure is the first book to explore all of Yalom's major writings. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, Jeffrey Berman comments on Yalom's profound contributions to psychotherapy and literature and emphasizes the recurrent ideas that unify his writings: the importance of the therapeutic relationship, therapist transparency, here-and-now therapy, the prevalence of death anxiety, reciprocal healing, and the idea of the wounded healer. Throughout, Berman discusses what Yalom can teach therapists in particular and the common (and uncommon) reader in general.

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Jeffrey Berman is Distinguished Teaching Professor of English at the University at Albany, State University of New York. His previous books include Writing Widowhood: The Landscapes of Bereavement; Death in the Classroom: Writing about Love and Loss; and Dying to Teach: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Learning, all published by SUNY Press.