4.5 stars
Date of review: November 21, 2024
I have read this book a few times, and it never fails to engage and intrigue me. Yalom’s books are always page turners, and this one is no different. I love the way this book offers a window into the therapy process (albeit written from the therapist’s perspective), rendered even more compelling by Yalom’s reputation: the reader is essentially learning about the intimate workings of therapy from a master therapist. I also like the fact that the chapters don’t always end with a happy success story; Yalom writes authentically about the highs and lows, and the successes and failures, of therapeutic process.
However, while Yalom holds an impressive awareness of his own biases and shortcomings, there is something jarring about the way in which he writes about these: he is honest and acknowledging of his biases, but he also seems to hold them in quite a comfortable way, or at the very least, he doesn’t give the reader a sense that he is dismantling them as actively as he should be. I wondered about the impact of this on his clients, and as I was reading, I certainly thought about whether he had unconsciously influenced some his clients in harmful ways as a result of not dismantling his harmful biases and beliefs.
Additionally, after reading this book, it seemed evident to me that Yalom has a blind spot when it comes to misogyny. Most chapters in which Yalom sees a female client have some kind of mention of the woman’s attractiveness or unattractiveness, yet this isn’t so in the chapters where Yalom describes his interactions with male clients. Again, the way he writes quite comfortably about his sexualisation of women is something I found a little worrying. As a therapist reading this, I suppose I understood why Yalom may have wanted to provide the reader with a summary of relevant aspects of each client which he connected or didn’t connect with. As a client (especially as a female client), I found some of his attitudes disconcerting.
While some of this casual misogyny might be explained by being a product of its time, this can’t be used as a full explanation (or an excuse) given that Yalom is revered as such a huge and relevant figure in modern-day psychotherapy; if students are to learn about everything positive he has contributed to the field (and they certainly should!), then they should also be acknowledging that some of his positions and attitudes are problematic.
Overall, I really loved reading this book, though not without a critical eye. Yalom would do well to show more awareness of his privilege as a male therapist, and to highlight to the reader how he managed to reform some of his biases.
Love’s Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy by Irvin Yalom is available to purchase from Amazon UK
