Becoming Myself : A Psychiatrist's Memoir

Becoming Myself : A Psychiatrist's Memoir
ISBN: 9781925322385
Publication Date: 30 October 2017

The must-read new memoir from one of psychiatry's most important figures.

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 upon 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 has hurt her. For Yalom, this was the birth of empathy; he would not forget the lesson.

As Becoming Myself unfolds, we see the development of the compassionate and insightful thinker whose books have been a beacon to so many. This is not simply one man's life story - Yalom's reflections on his life and growth are an invitation for us to reflect on the origins of our own selves and the meanings of our lives.

About the Author

Irvin D. Yalom is emeritus professor of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine. The author of two definitive psychotherapy textbooks, Dr Yalom has written several books for the general reader, including Momma and the Meaning of Life and Love's Executioner, collections of true and fictionalised tales of therapy; Staring at the Sun; and the novels When Nietzsche Wept; The Schopenhauer Cure, and The Spinoza Problem. Dr Yalom has an active but part-time private practice in Palo Alto and San Francisco, California.