| ||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Lying on the Couch: A Novel for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
From the bestselling author of Love's Executioner and When Nietzsche Wept comes a provocative exploration of the unusual relationships three therapists form with their patients. Seymour is a therapist of the old school who blurs the boundary of sexual propriety with one of his clients. Marshal, who is haunted by his own obsessive-compulsive behaviors, is troubled by the role money plays in his dealings with his patients. Finally, there is Ernest Lash. Driven by his sincere desire to help and his faith in psychoanalysis, he invents a radically new approach to therapy -- a totally open and honest relationship with a patient that threatens to have devastating results.
Exposing the many lies that are told on and off the psychoanalyst's couch, Lying on the Couch gives readers a tantalizing, almost illicit, glimpse at what their therapists might really be thinking during their sessions. Fascinating, engrossing and relentlessly intelligent, it ultimately moves readers with a denouement of surprising humanity and redemptive faith.
About the Author
Irvin D. Yalom, M.D., is the author of Love's Executioner, Momma and the Meaning of Life, Lying on the Couch, and When Nietzsche Wept, as well as several classic textbooks on psychotherapy, including Existential Psychotherapy and the most widely used work on group therapy, The Theory and Practice of Group Therapy. He is Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at Stanford University and divides his practice between Palo Alto, California, where he lives, and San Francisco.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
Three times a week for the past five years, Justin Astrid had started his day with a visit to Dr. Ernest Lash. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Three times a week for the past five years, Justin Astrid had started his day with a visit to Dr. Ernest Lash. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
24 of 24 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Irvin Yalom has written some modern 'classics' on the subject of psychoanalysis, and so I was fascinated to see that he had also written a novel on this topic too. How would he be able to create a plot that was true to life without becoming cynical about his own profession, or painting a picture of psychotherapists that was 'too good to be true'. In fact, I found this novel to be a well constructed - if rather ponderous at times - and entertaining read; the characters are neither black nor white morally, and the therapists come over as being just as screwed up as their patients! Which is refreshing! And honest... Some clever twists in the plot, and some very telling comments about psychoanalytic interventions made this a very good read on a recent trip - try it!
25 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a fascinating and most entertaining novel by an American professor of psychiatry. True, several strands in the novel interweave at the end in a rather contrived manner: the coincidences that bring this about are somewhat unlikely, and the last few pages, though moving, are completely unbelievable. Never mind: just suspend your disbelief and enjoy. Without giving away the plot, its main subject is how two people go insincerely and schemingly into psychoanalysis with unsuspecting analysts. (Note the double entendre in the title of the book.) We are told about their thought-processes and about those of the analysts. Those of the analysts are an amusing mix between, on the one hand, the psychoanalytical theory and the professional ethics they try to apply and, on the other, their own vulnerabilities to eroticism, power and money. The scheming patients get more than they bargained for.
Those who know little about psychoanalysis will learn a lot about it; those who are already familiar with it will find both the interior and the exterior dialogue wickedly funny. But having had his fun in mocking some aspects of his own profession, Yalom in the end validates it. And I think he wants to convey a serious and controversial message of his own: that there may be ways of helping a patient that could be more fruitful than the cultivation of the analyst’s remoteness from the patient on which orthodox theory insists.
28 of 30 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I love Irvin Yalom's work. His ideas are great and his ability to express complex psychotherapeutic issues is unparralleled. But not in this book. Many of the ideas are intriguing and he obviously had a great plot lined up. He also had a lot of great insights about the profession of therapy - especially the old fashioned analytic kind. Any psychotherapist or counsellor should read this book for their own good. And yes I did enjoy it. But that isnt the whole story. After the lucidity of the great textbook on the Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy I wasdisappointed by the frequency of lapses in literary style. A case of an author not reading their own work with a sufficently critical eye I hope - rather than a lapse of writing ability. Too many characters express themseleves or are described in the same ways and distinct phrases and words recur obtrusively. Sometimes that is to make a point about the prentiousness of the character but sometimes I wonder whether it was saying more about the lack of really thorough proof reading. A great literary editor missed a job here. If publishers were not so keen to publish work quickly - and were willing to spend more on attention to detail this otherwise really good read would have been even mroe enojoyable. I work in the therapy world and chuckled at the horrors I recognised and squirmed whenever I recognised myself - and to that extent irvin really did do a good job. Shame it wasnt quite polished off.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Engrossing tales around psychoanalysis
A terribly entertaining book. It starts in with one story, but gets richer as it progresses. I ended up loving it for completely different reasons that the ones I thought I would... Read more
Published on 30 Jan 2010
Cancelling orders
This seller doesn't allow enough time for cancelling orders.
Plus the book took a fair amount of time to come.
MDG
Plus the book took a fair amount of time to come.
MDG
Published on 13 Dec 2009 by Mme Maryse Slater
A messy attempt by a fine author to become the John Grisham of the...
I am a fan of Irvin Yalom. 'When Nietzsche Wept' was a good read and 'The Schopenhauer Cure' was excellent but Lying on the Couch is very poor. Read more
Published on 18 Nov 2009 by Justice Peace
An interesting read
I really enjoyed this book. Yalom succeeds in combining therapy and fiction in this novel about a San Francisco practitioner and the interesting insights he gives into the... Read more
Published on 3 July 2009 by Geoff Naylor
My Favourite Yalom!
Having read *all* of Yalom's books I can now say that this volue is, in my oppinion, his best book to date.
Other than that - check out the other reviews!
Other than that - check out the other reviews!
Published on 25 Sep 2008 by asp
A novel for psychotherapists
This book will appeal to psychotherapists, but I'm not at all certain that the general reader will find it terribly satisfying. Read more
Published on 30 Sep 2007 by A. W. Macfarlane
amusing portrayal of the imperfect art of psychotherapy
Lying on the Couch is most assuredly the author's defense of psychiatry/psychotherapy vs psycho-pharmocology. Read more
Published on 31 July 1999
A nuanced and analytical look at interpersonal relations
Our book club gave this novel mixed reviews. Those who didn't like it were turned off by the mass of detail depicting the psychoanalytic process. Read more
Published on 28 July 1999
My favorite Yalom Book
This was the best of the four I read by Yalom. I really enjoyed the book!
Published on 10 July 1999
A GREAT BIRTHDAY GIFT
THIS WAS THE FIRST BOOK OF MR.YALOM I READ AND I AM TOTALLY IMPRESSED.FOLLOWING THAT I READ 'WHEN NIETZCHE WEPT' AND 'EVERY DAY GETS A LITTLE CLOSER:A TWICE TOLD THERAPY'. Read more
Published on 27 Jun 1999
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
