The Gift of Therapy: An Open Letter to a New Generation of Therapists and Their Patients by Irvin D. Yalom

4.24 AVERAGE

ebryant's profile picture

ebryant's review against another edition

4.5
informative inspiring reflective fast-paced
I’d recommend this to all new therapists in the first 5 years of practice! It’s a quick read, but it’s also a deeply validating piece for the therapy experience. Depending on how you practice, it’s very affirming for relational-focused therapy, but is more suspicious of evidenced-based treatments like CBT, DBT, etc. Also, since this is a controversial topic between therapists, the author does endorse dream processing, so it may or may not resonate with everyone like it did for me. 

lulumelon07's review against another edition

5.0
inspiring medium-paced

colacar's review against another edition

4.5
informative inspiring reflective fast-paced

joejr's review against another edition

4.0
A book I will probably often revisit

allisondraste's review against another edition

4.0
I appreciated Yalom’s unorthodox approach to therapy, and his discussion of the issues with EVTs that are not often addressed (e.g, manualized treatments being normed on ‘clean’ patients with only one disorder. As someone who works with intellectually disabled clients this was VERY validating. I can’t use traditional therapy modalities because they are not accessible to my clients!) was super cool.

The prose was clear, concise, and well-organized. This is a good resource for new clinicians.

Just wish he’d talk about sexual attraction to his clients less.

bosoxfan1991's review against another edition

5.0
hopeful informative reflective fast-paced

mollllym's review

4.0
Flew through this read, really enjoyed it! I love Irvin Yalom's ideas about therapy and how human he is about it. Difficult to apply the ideas fully as they seem more relatable to none restricting NHS settings but nonetheless really glad I read this
anqihay's profile picture

anqihay's review against another edition

4.5
emotional hopeful inspiring reflective relaxing slow-paced
berkeleyjane's profile picture

berkeleyjane's review against another edition

3.5
emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective fast-paced

lizwright002's review against another edition

3.0
informative reflective slow-paced