Every Day Gets a Little Closer: A Twice-Told Therapy

by Irvin D. Yalom and Ginny Elkin

Book Overview

The many thousands of readers of the best-selling Love's Executioner will welcome this paperback edition of an earlier work by Dr. Irvin Yalom, written with Ginny Elkin, a pseudonymous patient whom he treated -- the first book to share the dual reflections of psychiatrist and patient. Ginny Elkin was a troubled young and talented writer whom the psychiatric world had labeled as "schizoid." After trying a variety of therapies, she entered into...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0465021182
• ISBN13: 9780465021185
• Release Date: January 1991
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Making Sense of the Therapeutic Relationship

This is a very courageous book about a very courageous project. It touched me deeply. Brief entries from a master therapist and a writer patient in which each describes what happened for them in each session over a year or so personalize the therapeutic process. One can read a half dozen self help books about therapy and never come as near to understanding the meaning of the therapeutic relationship as well as in this book. While this is not Yalom's best book in literary terms - he was clearly still thinking about being a writer rather than being one - his willingness to expose his own feelings, needs and strategy as a man and a therapist to both the patient (who got to read his entries periodically) and reader is enriching. The book is a good exposition of Yalom's thesis that therapy is ultimately and primarily about the relationship between patient and therapist in which what goes on in the 45 minute hour is the most important element in healing.

Life...Or Something Like It

This is one of those books I couldn't wait to run back to. In those free moments between dishes and the bank, and the relaxed air of bedtime, I reveled in anticipation, because this book is like a talk with my best friend. Maybe better. Candor, humor and delightful poetic insights ramble through the hills and valleys of this therapeutic reality fest. I came away with a new sense of myself and the possibilities of my life. I will miss Dr. Yalom and Ginny. If you are looking for Mary Higgins Clark you're in the wrong place. If you're looking for a friend you don't want to let go, this is your lucky day.

Step by step towards self-esteem

This book and others written by Yalom changed my life.I would suggest reading it to every person (especially young women)having self-esteem problems.I find Yalom extremely intelligent,warm hearted,subtle.He uses simple language to deal with the deepest topics. By the way,I'm rather envious of Ginny Elkin, because I would have liked to have the same experience of therapy.

Yalom does it again

Trained in counseling psychology with 10 years experience, I've read most of Yalom's works and in this, as usual he, and his client, are able to convey, in this case through an actual CASE, the candid and wonderfully challenging, beautiful process of growth through relationship - a definite read for those in training (it is normalizing of an often foreign training process) and interested in the drones, pains and small delights of how psychotherapy works. For the practitioner it poses as a refresher course to what we may have forgotten. This book lets you in to this strange world of healing, including the boredom, sensitivity, [counter] tranference issues and realness of the process, and the amazing world of a very interesting client. I recommend an overview reading from beginning to end and going back to find finer points and connections. I would not recommend this for people who thrive in the excitement of psychodrama, however - too slow. Love's Executioner may be a better bet for you. Great works.

A peek into a very private world

For anyone who has ever wondered what it is like inside the therapy session of another person, or how successful psychotherapy works, this is an extremely satisfying book. For another wonderful book with answers to these questions, (for which Dr. Yalom wrote a foreword) read "Inside Therapy," which collects the writing of a number of author/therapists about what goes on in the therapist's mind, the patient's mind and how the process works.