A Therapeutic Journey: Lessons from the School of Life - by Alain de Botton (Hardcover)

About the Book

A Therapeutic Journey is a collection of essays about mental challenge and health. Written with kindness, knowledge and sympathy, it is a practical guide to well-being and a source of consolation and companionship in what might be some of our loneliest, most anguished moments.

Book Synopsis

Alain de Botton's redemptive volume charts a course from collapse to recovery with kindness, compassion and wisdom.

"Alain de Botton, one of our era's most uncommonly perceptive, lyrical, and lucid existential contemplatives." -- The Marginalian

A Therapeutic Journey is a collection of essays about mental challenge and health. Written with kindness, knowledge and sympathy, it is a practical guide to well-being and a source of consolation and companionship in what might be some of our loneliest, most anguished moments.

Alain de Botton explores how we can cope with a variety of forms of mental pain and illness, from the mild to the severe. It considers how and why we might become ill; how we can explain things to friends, family and colleagues; how we can find our ways towards recovery; and how we can build resilience, so as to live wisely alongside our difficulties.

At heart this is a book about happiness - about regaining the thread of our lives, rediscovering meaning, and finding our way back to connection, warmth and joy.

Review Quotes

PRAISE FOR A THERAPEUTIC JOURNEY

"A THERAPEUTIC JOURNEY is essential to the literature on emotional well-being and life navigation. It functions not just as a guide but also as a friend--one that offers solutions and the right questions to ponder." -- Mental Health Affairs

"The book serves as a toolkit for life's complexities [...] delving into existential issues that often underscore emotional well-being." -- Mental Health Affairs

"A collection of essays designed to help us find our way back to connection, warmth, and joy--it's a mediation on the wisdom of children and the comfort, catharsis, and even clarity that tears can bring. In these difficult days, may it be a balm leading us away from despair and toward hope." -- The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad

"How to cultivate a mind that faces the gauntlet of living without making of it a hell is what Alain de Botton, philosopher of poetic pragmatism, explores in A Therapeutic Journey: Lessons from The School of Life." -- The Marginalian

"...I am obsessed with Alain de Botton. ...If you are going to get one of Botton's books, this one is a great summary of all the stuff the School of Life has been up to over the past few years." -- Bad At Keeping Secrets Newsletter

"De Botton has a gift for looking at the great questions of human existence--love, friendship, work, travel, home--in a way that is intellectually rigorous, therapeutic, amusing and always highly readable." -- Oldster Magazine

"De Botton acts as our friend and guide, hand in ours, walking alongside us, slowly, as he identifies the nature of mental illness and mental health [...] and delivers us back to what we've lost--hope." -- Amanda Stern, How to Live Newsletter

PRAISE FOR THE SCHOOL OF LIFE: AN EMOTIONAL EDUCATION:

People Magazine's "Self-Help Pick" in Best New Books.

"The School of Life: An Emotional Education -- the wonderful handbook of self-refinement that gave us De Botton on existential maturity and what emotional intelligence really means." -- The Marginalian

"The School of Life: An Emotional Education is a salve in its entirety." -- The Marginalian

"[I] found the book so convincing that I took its ideas into consideration while making some major decisions in my own life." -- The Cut

"[A] beautiful book that you should have in your home" --Virgin Radio "As we each do our part to remake our institutions to be more focused on human flourishing, we can and should begin with ourselves, using the insights gathered in this practical volume" -- Erraticus Magazine

"This book is a gift to sufferers who crave understanding and who want to heal. The journey that de Botton takes us through is comprehensive, precise, and wide-ranging, folding in art, work, imposter syndrome, exercise, routine, listening, community, loneliness, food, and a roadmap out of grief and into hope." -- Amanda Stern, How to Live

PRAISE FOR ALAIN DE BOTTON AND THE SCHOOL OF LIFE:

"A serious and optimistic set of practical ideas that could improve and alter the way we live." -- Jeanette Winterson

"Alain de Botton likes to take big, complex subjects and write about them with thoughtful and deceptive innocence." -- Observer

"What he has managed to do is remarkable: to help us think better so that we may live better lives." -- Irish Times

PRAISE FOR THE COURSE OF LOVE:

"The Course of Love is a return to the form that made Mr. de Botton's name in the mid-1990s.... love is the subject best suited to his obsessive aphorizing, and in this novel he again shows off his ability to pin our hopes, methods and insecurities to the page." -- The New York Times

"There's no writer alive like de Botton, and his latest ambitious undertaking is as enlightening and humanizing as his previous works." -- Chicago Tribune

"For me, the publication of any book by Alain de Botton is as much a reason for celebration as it is for cerebration, and his novel The Course of Love is a satisfying look at relationships and the perils of romantic love. This public philosopher writes with verve." -- Wall Street Journal (WSJ.com)

"This book is like a self-help book for dating and relationships, disguised as a novel...We understand what each person is thinking and why, with de Botton's insights sprinkled in. It made me rethink what it means to be happy in a relationship." -- The Cut (NYMag.com)

"Readers looking for insights and guidance will find plenty." -- NPR

"An engrossing tale [that] provides plenty of food for thought." -- People (Best New Books pick)

"Assured...The author deftly delivers both sides of the marriage, exploring the incompatible interplay of romantic love and practical love." -- San Francisco Chronicle

"A living, volatile portrait of how two very different souls love, complement and aggravate each other. You may not agree with all of de Botton's thoughts on marriage, but it's wonderful how he makes such a big, sweeping subject out of routine existence." -- Seattle Times

'"The always-intriguing de Botton, who returns to fiction after 20 years and numerous nonfiction books, aims to answer the question, What is it like to be married for awhile? The answers are often funny but also quite moving, thought provoking, forgiving, and drenched in truth." -- Booklist

"An ambitious book; one that resolves, if it cannot change art, to widen our expectations of what we might go to a novel for." -- Flavorwire

"The Course of Love is a complete delight. Not surprisingly, I feel that Alain de Botton not only wrote it for me, but also that we must have been conversing on these subjects happily and deeply, privately or in my dreams." -- Amy Bloom, New York Times bestselling author of Away and Lucky Us

PRAISE FOR ON LOVE:

"The Romantic Movement sheds light on the nature of relationships...The method of telling much and showing little produces a good deal of wit, cogency, and humor." -- John Updike, The New Yorker

"A reader gets whiffs of Donald Barthelme, Julian Barnes...De Botton borrows exuberantly, and well, from forebears [and] therein lies the buoyant charm of this approach." -- The New York Times Book Review

"Smart and ironic...The success of On Love has much to do with its beautifully modeled sentences, its wry humor, and its unwavering deadpan respect for the reader's intelligence." -- Francine Prose, The New Yorker

PRAISE FOR THE ARCHITECTURE OF HAPPINESS:

"De Botton has a marvelous knack for coming at weighty subjects from entertainingly eccentric angles." -- The Seattle Times

"An elegant book." -- The New York Sun

"With originality, verve, and wit, de Botton explains how we find reflections of our own values in the edifices we make. . . . Altogether satisfying." -- San Francisco Chronicle

"De Botton is high falutin' but user friendly. . . . He keeps architecture on a human level." -- Los Angeles Times

PRAISE FOR HOW PROUST CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE:

"Delightfully original.... As well as being criticism, biography, literary history, and a reader's guide to Proust's masterpiece, this is a self-help book in the deepest sense of the term." -- The New York Times

"One of my favorite books of the year.... Seriously cheeky, cheekily serious." -- Julian Barnes

"Curious, humorous, didactic, and dazzling.... It contains more human interest and play of fancy than most fiction." -- John Updike, The New Yorker

"A witty, elegant book that helps us learn what reading is for." -- Doris Lessing

"A wonderful meditation on aspects of Proust in the form of a self-help book. Very enjoyable." -- Sebastian Faulks

"Funny and very refreshing." -- San Francisco Chronicle

PRAISE FOR THE CONSOLATIONS OF PHILOSOPHY:

"Wonderfully original, quirky.... De Botton finds inspiration where others might fail to look." -- Newsday

"An enjoyable read... In clear, witty prose, de Botton...sets some of [the philosophers'] ideas to the mundane task of helping readers with their personal problems.... The quietly ironic style and eclectic approach will gratify many postmodern readers." --Publishers Weekly

About the Author

The School of Life is here to help you learn, heal and grow. We are devoted to bringing you calm, self-understanding, better relationships, deeper friendships, greater effectiveness at work and more fulfilment in your leisure time.

We do this via our books, our app, our films, our therapeutic services and our corporate offering.

The School of Life Press brings together the thinking and ideas of The School of Life creative team under the direction of series editor, Alain de Botton.