Summary: Irvin D. Yalom’s The Gift of Therapy is a guidebook written for people entering the psychotherapy profession. The text’s many concise and enlightening chapters cover a range of topics that unveil Yalom’s therapeutic theory and practice, focusing on his experiences with individual therapy, group therapy, and existential therapy. Written with tremendous spirit, deep compassion, and candid [...]
“We all come into existence as a single cell, smaller than a speck of dust. Much smaller. Divide. Multiply. Add and subtract. Matter changes hands, atoms flow in and out, molecules pivot, proteins stitch together, mitochondria send out their oxidative dictates; we begin as a microscopic electrical swarm. The lung the brain the heart. Forty [...]
Very few philosophical novels hold universal appeal, and this one doesn’t break the mold. I truly enjoyed Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog, but wouldn’t recommend it to just anyone. The story follows two women living in close proximity: Renée, the middle-aged concierge of a French apartment building, and Paloma, the precocious and suicidal [...]
“My father once told me that respect for truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. ‘Something cannot emerge from nothing,’ he said. This is profound thinking if you understand how unstable ‘the truth’ can be.” ––Dune, by Frank Herbert, loc. 4259 “The intense view of these manifold contradictions and imperfections in [...]
“It’s what happen at home that you try to protect, as best you can, for as long as you can.” ––Family Furnishings: Selected Stories, 1995-2014, by Alice Munro, pg. 303 “We childless ones, whether through bravery or cowardice, constitute a kind of existential vanguard, forced by our own choices to face the naked question [...]