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Summary
Summary
Bestselling writer and psychotherapist Irvin D. Yalom puts himself on the couch in a "candid, insightful" (Abraham Verghese) memoir
Irvin D. Yalom has made a career of investigating the lives of others. In this profound memoir, he turns his writing and his therapeutic eye on himself. He opens his story with a nightmare: He is twelve, and is riding his bike past the home of an acne-scarred girl. Like every morning, he calls out, hoping to befriend her, "Hello Measles!" But in his dream, the girl's father makes Yalom understand that his daily greeting had hurt her. For Yalom, this was the birth of empathy; he would not forget the lesson. As Becoming Myself unfolds, we see the birth of the insightful thinker whose books have been a beacon to so many. This is not simply a man's life story, Yalom's reflections on his life and development are an invitation for us to reflect on the origins of our own selves and the meanings of our lives.
Author Notes
Irvin D. Yalom was born in Washington, D.C. on June 13, 1931, of parents who immigrated from Russia shortly after World War I. Yalom entered into medical school intent on studying the field of psychiatry. His first writings were scientific contributions to professional journals. His first book, "The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy" was widely used as a text for training therapists. It has been translated into twelve languages and spawned four editions.
"Existential Psychotherapy" followed, which was a textbook for a course that did not exist at the time, and then "Inpatient Group Psychotherapy," a guide to leading groups in the inpatient psychiatric ward. In an effort to teach aspects of Existential Therapy, Yalom turned to a literary conveyance and wrote a book of therapy tales called "Love's Executioner", two teaching novels, "When Nietzsche Wept" and "Lying on the Couch" and, "Momma and the Meaning of Life," a collection of true and fictionalized tales of therapy.
These books went on to be best sellers, and "When Nietzsche Wept" won the Commonwealth Gold Medal for best fiction of 1993. They have been widely translated,each into about fifteen to twenty languages, and have had considerable distribution abroad.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Kirkus Review
A distinguished psychotherapist reflects on his life and fulfilling career.After a prolific string of publications including fiction, nonfiction, and collections of case files from his practice, Yalom (Emeritus, Psychiatry/Stanford Univ.; Creatures of a Day: And Other Tales of Psychotherapy, 2015, etc.) turns his perspective inward. Braided throughout client profiles are colorfully drawn anecdotes of his younger days as a self-proclaimed "disturber of the peace" whose disrespect and rebelliousness were always assigned primary blame for any unrest within the family household, including his father's chest pain. Yet these are characteristics he regrets now, as an adult, as well as not being able to connect more emotionally with his frugal immigrant parents before time ran out. Valiantly leaving home for medical school meant seriousness and discipline, both of which Yalom mastered, even while making room for love. In smoothly conversational prose, the author ruminates on anger, his Jewish identity and the "ruins of my own religious education," the "encounter groups" of the 1960s, the evolution of his relationship with wife Marilyn, a stint in the Army, international sojourns, and his psychiatry practice, which eventually landed him at Stanford. In the most touching chapters, Yalom chronicles how he has wrestled with the integrative role that death plays in the everyday lives of his patients (as well as with his own mortality). At 86, the author, an avid bicycler and poker enthusiast, still writes daily and sees patients in his San Francisco apartment. The author believes their intimate histories affect how he personally views his present life and memorializes his past, a notion that fortifies much of this fecund memoir. "My clients' memories more often trigger my own," he writes, "my work on their future calls upon and disturbs my past, and I find myself reconsidering my own story." Fans of this eloquent and introspective author will welcome this innermost chronicle of his history, passions, and the keys to unlocking a fruitful life. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
New York Review of Books Review
Yalom, the eminent Stanford physician, novelist and pioneer in the field of existential psychiatry, has a wealth of experience that shapes the story he wants to tell. But "Becoming Myself" is not about the external world; it is the memoir of a storied career that fails to contain the richness of the life it chronicles. Memoir is a difficult literary form to pull off when dealing with discrete and poignant moments in a life, even harder when seeking to narrate over 80 years of existence. His is still an interesting book, despite its workmanlike prose, because it involves a journey that takes us from 1930s Washington, D.C., to present-day Palo Alto with pit stops around the world. Yalom writes less as a physician passing along profound clinical insights in his chosen field than as a grandfather meandering through different aspects of his life with unrelenting honesty and more than a little self-deprecation - such is the luxury of the successful, self-aware man. The best memoirists are able to fully situate themselves within the world, however internal their writing - what did it mean, for example, for Yalom, who grew up in a poor Washington neighborhood, to be a Jewish boy living with black people before the advent of the civil rights movement? While interesting, Yalom's memoir is somewhat disengaged from this wider context and, as a result, much less impactful than it could have been at a time when we know that we can no longer isolate or insulate ourselves from the absolute upheaval happening around us.
Library Journal Review
Psychiatrist, Stanford professor, and prolific author (Love's Executioner; When Nietzsche Wept) Yalom, a self-described disturber of the peace, engages the reader therapeutically. That term, from Greek, means healing: quoting Nietzsche, "what doesn't kill me makes me stronger." In 40 chapters, from "The Birth of Empathy" to "A Novice at Growing Old," the author writes with authority, energy, and humility. Of his mother we learn, "She never had a positive word for me, and I returned the favor." He addresses family, religion, encounter groups, world travels, and death, and is a fine example for writers, teachers, parents, and would-be leaders. He lets readers get to know him well through a personal, therapeutic dialog showing vulnerability along with strength. He recalls risky motorcycle tours, an experiment with LSD, his first psychiatric patient, and an unhelpful analysis followed by three happy years of training in psychiatry. He also notes that memoirs are "far more fictional than we like to think." Verdict An honest, engaging, and rewarding autobiography. For Yalom's admirers and those interested in the philosophy of psychology and memoirs.-E. James Lieberman, George -Washington Univ. Sch. of Medicine, Washington, DC © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Chapter 1 The Birth of Empathy | p. 1 |
| Chapter 2 Searching for a Mentor | p. 4 |
| Chapter 3 I Want Her Gone | p. 10 |
| Chapter 4 Circling Back | p. 15 |
| Chapter 5 The Library, A-Z | p. 23 |
| Chapter 6 The Religious War | p. 27 |
| Chapter 7 A Gambling Lad | p. 40 |
| Chapter 8 A Brief History of Anger | p. 44 |
| Chapter 9 The Red Table | p. 51 |
| Chapter 10 Meeting Marilyn | p. 59 |
| Chapter 11 College Days | p. 64 |
| Chapter 12 Marrying Marilyn | p. 77 |
| Chapter 13 My First Psychiatric Patient | p. 82 |
| Chapter 14 Internship: The Mysterious Dr. Blackwood | p. 86 |
| Chapter 15 The Johns Hopkins Years | p. 92 |
| Chapter 16 Assigned to Paradise | p. 111 |
| Chapter 17 Coming Ashore | p. 122 |
| Chapter 18 A Year in London | p. 142 |
| Chapter 19 The Brief, Turbulent Life of Encounter Groups | p. 151 |
| Chapter 20 Sojourn in Vienna | p. 156 |
| Chapter 21 Every Day Gets a Little Closer | p. 163 |
| Chapter 22 Oxford and the Enchanted Coins of Mr. Sfica | p. 169 |
| Chapter 23 Existential Therapy | p. 176 |
| Chapter 24 Confronting Death with Rollo May | p. 187 |
| Chapter 25 Death, Freedom, Isolation, and Meaning | p. 195 |
| Chapter 26 Inpatient Groups and Paris | p. 201 |
| Chapter 27 Passage to India | p. 208 |
| Chapter 28 Japan, China, Bali, and Love's Executioner | p. 220 |
| Chapter 29 When Nietzsche Wept | p. 234 |
| Chapter 30 Lying on the Couch | p. 246 |
| Chapter 31 Momma and the Meaning of Life | p. 252 |
| Chapter 32 On Becoming Greek | p. 262 |
| Chapter 33 The Gift of Therapy | p. 270 |
| Chapter 34 Two Years with Schopenhauer | p. 278 |
| Chapter 35 Staring at the Sun | p. 284 |
| Chapter 36 Final Works | p. 297 |
| Chapter 37 Yikes! Text Therapy | p. 305 |
| Chapter 38 My Life in Groups | p. 310 |
| Chapter 39 On Idealization | p. 323 |
| Chapter 40 A Novice at Growing Old | p. 334 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 343 |
