While I occasionally found Yalom’s examples a bit too therapist-focused, I nonetheless see this as a very useful approach. Yalom focuses a lot on the difference between content (the concrete details discussed in therapy) and process (how those details influence the client-therapist relationship).To keep things balanced, he also offers scrupulous analysis of the professional boundaries necessary to form and maintain a strong therapeutic alliance. Yalom presents a very egalitarian and nonhierarchical view of the therapist-client relationship, referring to both parties as “fellow travelers” in the mysterious and challenging journey of life.It is not within the therapist’s capacity to directly “fix” clients, so the appropriate goal is to help identify and clear out impediments to client autonomy and self-actualization. A therapist’s primary function, Yalom says, is to “remove obstacles” that stand in the way of a client’s natural growth and healing process (1).I found it extremely helpful and can’t wait to put the lessons contained here into practice. This is the first book I’ve read for my graduate program that felt like we were finally getting into the nuts and bolts of how therapy works.Written with tremendous spirit, deep compassion, and candid intelligence, The Gift of Therapy is an essential examination of one of modern life’s most challenging and rewarding vocations. The text’s many concise and enlightening chapters cover a range of topics that unveil Yalom’s therapeutic theory and practice, focusing on his experiences with individual therapy, group therapy, and existential therapy. Yalom’s The Gift of Therapyis a guidebook written for people entering the psychotherapy profession.

Yalom the gift of therapy