Creatures of a Day

Eminent psychotherapist and author of Love’s Executioner Irvin D. Yalom gives us a new collection of ten absorbing tales of psychotherapy, revealing the mysteries, frustrations, pathos, and humor at the heart of the therapeutic encounter. As he nears the end of his long and distinguished career, Yalom mines his therapeutic experience, both recent and long past, to grapple with life’s two biggest challenges: how to live a life worth living, and how to deal with its inevitable end.

In recounting his patients’ dilemmas, 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. With compassion and humility, he prods his patients to explore the anxiety, fear, and vulnerability that accompany their thoughts about death. His patients are reticent, confused, and frustrating, but also open, insightful, and inspiring—from the former CEO struggling to adjust to life in a retirement community, to the young professional dealing with the loss of both of his parents, to the former ballerina realizing that her days on the stage are far behind her. Then there is the lonely writer with terminal cancer who spends her last weeks in Yalom’s office, looking for someone to shepherd her through cancer’s brutal accentuation of all life’s “pleasure and sweetness” even as it sweeps it away.

As documented through Yalom’s masterful storytelling, Creatures of a Day, like Love’s Executioner, shows that the process of psychotherapy can create some of the most engrossing human dramas imaginable. Heartfelt, inspiring, and endlessly compelling, Creatures of a Day provides an unflinching look at the human soul, and all the pain, confusion, and hope that goes with it.

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