Love's Executioner

Love's Executioner

Introduction

Ten patients turned to psychotherapy, and in the course of their sessions were discussed with the pain of existence. This was not the reason came to me for help, on the contrary, the ten suffered from the common problems of everyday life: loneliness, worthlessness, helplessness, headaches, sexual compulsivity, obesity, hypertension, pain, obsessive love that consumed, changing moods, depression. And yet (though that one develops differently in each story) therapy brought to the surface the deep roots of these problems daily, roots dating back to bedrock of existence. Although these stories abound words psychotherapy patient and therapist, do not be misled the reader to these terms: These are accounts relating to all men and all women and quality of ubiquitous patient. Allocation of that label is largely arbitrary and often depends more on cultural, educational and economic than the severity of the disease.

A taxi driver who criticized her daughter's death four years earlier, a single man who tries to forget his terminal cancer by the love frantically , an accountant or impotent faced with strange headaches. Ten stories, ten patients notified by Irvin D. Yalom to illustrate the difficulties faced by the psychiatrist, a real ' executioner of love '. But also a portrait of uncompromising psychotherapist, caught between its professional requirements and instincts most intensely human, sometimes confronted, too, most bitter chess.

Yalom has the idea that what leads people to start therapy is the despair caused by the inability to achieve full intimate relationships, i.e., meaningful and happy. He proceeds at its (work hard as a group, although here has individual therapy cases) trying to achieve that approach with their patients, with the idea, too psychoanalytic, that what happens in the relationship between patient and psychotherapist exposed (and enconces can solve) the difficulties that patient has to be linked.

It is not very often that I read 111 pages all in one gigantic reading session. But this was no ordinary book: this was I.D Yalom's Love Executioner. Gripping, absorbing, compelling, this is one book where the word novel could not even begin to describe it accurately. It was certainly a story book. Actually, a collection of stories about Yalom's (an American psychiatrist and psychotherapist) real life experiences with clients whose identities have been changed, of course, to protect confidentiality. Enough said, let me tell you why I read it.

I too have been in “therapy.” Actually, I hate that term, it sounds very much like an self-indulgent ego trip of the mind, where you go for a brain cleanse after a hard days work. Personally, It can sound weak and feeble, rather dysfunctional, and what does this word really convey, really mean to real ordinary people hurting and in sometimes desperate need ? Well, if you read the book you will learn two things about therapy.

1) It is not for the faint hearted, if is done professionally and effectively. You need stamina and courage, it's no quick fix, and well it wasn't for me.

2) Properly trained therapist, (of which I mean ...