Love's Executioner - by Irvin D Yalom (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER

An "utterly absorbing" collection of ten classic tales from the therapist's chair by renowned psychiatrist and best-selling author Irvin D. Yalom (Newsday)

Why was Saul tormented by three unopened letters from Stockholm? What made Thelma spend her whole life raking over a long-past love affair? How did Carlos's macho fantasies help him deal with terminal cancer?

In this engrossing book, Irvin Yalom gives detailed and deeply affecting accounts of his work with these and seven other patients. Deep down, all of them were suffering from the basic human anxieties--isolation, fear of death or freedom, a sense of the meaninglessness of life--that none of us can escape completely. And yet, as the case histories make touchingly clear, it is only by facing such anxieties head on that we can hope to come to terms with them and develop. Throughout, Dr. Yalom remains refreshingly frank about his own errors and prejudices; his book provides a rare glimpse into the consulting room of a master therapist.

Review Quotes

"[In Love's Executioner, ] Yalom showed that the psychological case study could give readers what the short fiction of the time increasingly refused to deliver: the pursuit of secrets, intrigue, big emotions, plot."--Laura Miller, The New York Times

"Dr. Yalom demonstrates once again that in the right hands, the stuff of therapy has the interest of the richest and most inventive fiction."--New York Times

"Like Freud, Yalom is a graceful and canny writer. The fascinating, moving, enervating, inspiring, unexpected stuff of psychotherapy is told with economy and, most surprising, with humor." --Washington Post Book World

"The fascinating, moving, enervating, inspiring, unexpected stuff of psychotherapy is told with economy and, most surprisingly, with humor."--Washington Post Book World

"Wise, humane, stirring, and utterly absorbing.... Irvin Yalom's book is charged with hope and generosity of spirit."--Newsday

"Inspired.... Yalom writes with the narrative wit of O. Henry and the earthy humor of Isaac Bashevis Singer."--San Francisco Chronicle

About the Author

Irvin D. Yalom, M.D., is an Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at Stanford University. He is the author of numerous books, including When Nietzsche Wept and Becoming Myself. He lives in Palo Alto, California.