Reviews

``It's the relationship that heals'' is a slogan psychotherapist Yalom claims as his ``professional rosary.'' In these 10 eloquent, engaging tales of personal transformation, each patient makes some headway in overcoming compulsions, depression, hyptertension or whatever--yet each also comes face to face with larger problems such as the inevitability of death or the existential need to give one's life meaning. Among those we get to know intimately are an isolated man who copes with terminal cancer by having promiscuous sex, an accountant who draws detailed graphs correlating his migraines with his bouts of impotence, and a taxicab driver still numbed by guilt and grief four years after her daughter's death. Yalom's humanism shines through in these wise, moving stories. Because he makes his own feelings and biases explicit, they become factors in the equation of therapeutic change. 50,000 first printing; $50,000 ad/ promo; author tour. (Sept.)

Because Yalom (psychiatry, Stanford Univ.) is not only an accomplished psychiatrist but a gifted storyteller as well, his new book moves at the pace of a suspense thriller, with each chapter providing a fascinating look at the patient-therapist relationship. Yalom gives the reader the opportunity to view up close the intimate, and sometimes startling, relationship that develops between client and therapist. Refusing to paint an artificial picture of therapy as always successful--a truly unique aspect of this work--Yalom also describes relationships in which clients have walked out, never to return; the reader is left to ponder why the relationship ended as it did. At once funny and insightful; highly recommended.-- Kim Banks, Columbia Univ. Lib.