Creatures of a Day : and Other Tales of Psychotherapy

Creatures of a Day : and Other Tales of Psychotherapy
ISBN: 9781925106428
Publication Date: 25 February 2015

In his long and distinguished career, Irvin D. Yalom has pressed his patients and readers to grapple with life's two greatest challenges: that we all must die, and that each of us is responsible for leading a life worth living.

In Creatures of a Day, he and his patients confront the difficulty of these challenges. Yalom not only gives us an enthralling glimpse into their personal desires and motivations but also tells us his own story as he struggles to reconcile his emotional life with the demands placed on him, and reckons with his own life's inevitable end.

Creatures of a Day show that the process of psychotherapy can create some of the most engrossing human dramas imaginable. It provides an intelligent, compassionate, and yet unflinching look at the human soul and all the pain, confusion, and hope that go with it. Suffused with humour, great artistry, and a profound humanity. Creatures of a Day lays bare the necessary task we each face, each day, to make our own lives meaningful.

Read Caroline Baum's Review

Irving Yalom is a much loved writer-psychiatrist, who belongs in the same league as Oliver Sacks in his understanding of human behaviour in its infinite variety. His substantial body of work is built on his practice and his wide reading of great literary classics, especially the nineteenth century Russians and the German philosophers Nietszche and Schopenhauer. If this sounds esoteric, it isn't: Yalom is down to earth, shrewd, empathetic and engagingly readable. Even if you don't need therapy, you'll find some rich wisdom in these eavesdroppings on the talking cure.