Perhaps the real therapy occurred at the deathbed scene, when they moved into honesty with the revelation that they were fellow travelers, both simply human, all too human.” T]echnique has a different meaning for the novice than for the expert. One needs technique in learning to play the piano but eventually, if one is to make music, one must transcend learned technique and trust one's spontaneous moves.” The Gift of Therapy has 85 short chapters, each offering a suggestion or tip for therapy. The first three chapters are reproduced here. 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. Dr. Yalom draws on his 45 years of clinical practice and comes up with a collection of his most passionate categories of interest.In this book he attempts to gift to the new generation of therapists his pearls of wisdom from those years by selecting 85 categories of subjects that come up in a therapy practice and elaborating on his successful interventions in these areas.

Dynamic is here used in the technical sense, implying that the forces in conflict with the individual “exist at varying levels of awareness; indeed some are entirely unconscious.”The Gift Of Therapy (Revised And Updated Edition): An open letter to a new generation of therapists and their patients One other factor influenced my selection of these eighty-five items. My recent novels and stories contain many descriptions of therapy procedures I’ve found useful in my clinical work but, since my fiction has a comic, often burlesque tone, many readers are unclear if I am serious or not about the therapy procedures I describe. The Gift of Therapyoffers me an opportunity to set the record straight. Consequently, the book should not be understood and/or used as a “systematic manual,” but as “a supplement to a comprehensive training program.” It is discussions about death which help us move from our everyday mode of existence (full of distractions with our material surroundings) to an ontologic mode of being (filled with wonderment and readiness for change). Having reached his 70th year, Yalom (psychiatry, Stanford U.) worries about where the next generation of effective psychotherapists will be trained, noting that the big medical corporations are primarily interested in pushing medicine. He advises students against sectarianism and suggests a therapeutic pluralism in which effective interventions are drawn from several different therapy approaches. He does not include an index. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Use dreams pragmatically: first master some dream navigational skills, then pay attention to the narrative and then pillage and loot through them! Hazards and Privileges (84 – 85) These two are parallel interests, but, nevertheless, they are also separate: as Yalom says, just as there can be no group therapy for one person, there’s also no such thing as existential group therapy. It is dark. I come to your office but can’t find you. Your office is empty. I enter and look around. The only thing there is your Panama hat. And it is all filled with cobwebs.People who would be bothered by Dr. Yalom’s negative statements about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) might not enjoy The Gift of Therapy. Conclusion 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. Finally, there are four ultimate concerns, i.e., four givens of existence: death, isolation, meaning in life, and freedom. Process and Content if we hope for more significant therapeutic change, we must encourage our patients to assume responsibility—that is, to apprehend how they themselves contribute to their distress.”

Patient difficulties can disrupt life: relationship strains, child rearing stresses, bereavement, marital discord, illnesses, etc. First of all, you need to try hard not to isolate yourself from others: therapists are sometimes just too solitary creatures;Consequently, Yalom is worried that what he leaves behind is a world in which psychotherapy is seen as just another job from which someone is to make a profit, rather than a humane discipline whose sole objective is to help people – regardless of the cost. But now, reconsidering the story, I question whether these two wounded healers could not have been of even more service to one another. Perhaps they missed the opportunity for something deeper, more authentic, more powerfully mutative. Perhaps the real therapy occurred at the deathbed scene, when they moved into honesty with the revelation that they were fellow travelers, both simply human, all too human. The twenty years of secrecy, helpful as they were, may have obstructed and prevented a more profound kind of help. What might have happened if Dion's deathbed confession had occurred twenty years earlier, if healer and seeker had joined together in facing the questions that have no answers? Dr. Irvin Yalom is a psychiatrist who has mastered a form of therapy called existential psychotherapy and served as an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Stanford University. He is a prolific writer of novels and books on psychotherapy. A documentary film, Yalom’s Cure, about his remarkable life is emblematic of his life’s work: an existential journey through the human psyche. General description Nevertheless, be aware that some patient difficulties can – and sometimes will – disrupt your life and may cause relationship strains and even thoughts of suicide;