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Synopses & Reviews
"All of us are creatures of a day,” wrote Marcus Aurelius, “rememberer and remembered alike.” In his long-awaited new collection of stories, renowned psychiatrist Irvin D. Yalom describes his patients struggles — as well as his own — to come to terms with the two great challenges of existence: how to have a meaningful life, and how to reckon with its inevitable end. In these pages, we meet a nurse, angry and adrift in a morass of misery where she has lost a son to a world of drugs and crime, and yet who must comfort the more privileged through their own pain; a successful businessman who, in the wake of a suicide, despairs about the gaps and secrets that infect every relationship; a newly minted psychologist whose study of the human condition damages her treasured memories of a lost friend; and a man whose rejection of philosophy forces even Yalom himself into a crisis of confidence. Their names and stories will linger long after the books last page is turned.
Like Love's Executioner, which established Yalom's preeminence as a storyteller illuminating the drama of existential therapy, Creatures of a Day is funny, earthy, and often shocking; it is a radically honest statement about the difficulties of human life, but also a celebration of some of the finest fruits — love, family, friendship — that life can bear. We are all creatures of a day. With Yalom as a guide, we can find in this book the means not just to make our own day bearable, but meaningful — and perhaps even joyful.
Review
"Novelist and psychiatrist Yalom offers 10 tales from his clients that illuminate the gifts of psychotherapy, particularly the hopeful lessons one can glean from it in the context of aging and death.... [He] has genuinely inspiring insights to share about the value of therapy.... The stories Yalom offers of his patients failures and triumphs are frequently moving and will invoke the readers empathy.”
Publisher's Weekly
Review
"[Yalom] writes amiably, certainly sympathetically, and always wisely from his point of view as an octogenarian therapist who has seen it all — well, maybe almost all — and who has some useful thoughts about the mysteries of the mind.... [He] offers plenty of pointers for up-and-coming therapists and does so without staking out ideological territory in the ongoing battles among post-Freudians, post-Jungians, and post-everyone-elsians. A humane, highly knowledgeable glimpse of the therapists couch." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Personal, honest, sensitive, and respectful, Yalom, now in his 80s, describes frustration and mistakes amid much success. His combination of confidence and humility shows how these qualities work in psychotherapy — a process too often burdened with theory and/or mystique.... This book will inspire therapists at any stage along with lay readers intrigued by the psyche, relationships, and the possibilities of change.” Library Journal (starred review)
Review
"Creatures of a Day is a series of moving, if partly fictionalized, tales illuminating Yalom's hand-crafted approach to treating grief, loss, regret and, above all, encroaching mortality.... [Yalom] is a student of the human condition whose literary, as well as therapeutic, voice mixes wonder and humility.” Boston Globe
Review
"Irvin Yalom has, over the last 40 years, become a master of the art of psychotherapy storytelling. To his latest collection of clinical tales, Creatures of a Day, Dr. Yalom has brought his characteristic warmth and wisdom, but there is something new here as well: urgency.... The result is a collection of tightly written and deeply moving testaments to the brevity of life and the existential imperative to live it well.” New York Journal of Books
Synopsis
In his long career, eminent psychotherapist and author Irvin 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. Although these people have come to Yalom seeking relief, recognition, or meaning, he and they discover that such things are rarely found in the places where we think to look.
Like Love's Executioner and Yalom's other writing, Creatures of a Day lays bare the necessary task we each face, each day, to make our own lives meaningful.
About the Author
Irvin D. Yalom is an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Stanford University and a psychiatrist in private practice in San Francisco. He is the author of many books, including Loves Executioner, Theory and Practice in Group Psychotherapy, and When Nietzsche Wept.
Table of Contents
1. The Crooked Cure
2. On Being Real
3. Arabesque
4. Thank You, Molly
5. Don't Fence Me In
6. Show Some Class for Your Kids
7. You Must Give Up the Hope for a Better Past
8. Get Your Own Damn Fatal Illness: Homage to Ellie
9. Three Cities
9. Creatures of a Day