Love’s Executioner

“Dr. Yalom demonstrates once again that in the right hands, the stuff of therapy has the interest of the richest and most inventive fiction.”

“Like Freud, Yalom is a graceful and canny writer. The fascinating, moving, enervating, inspiring, unexpected stuff of psychotherapy is told with economy and, most surprisingly, with humor.”

“Yalom is a gifted storyteller, and from the sound of these tales, a no‑less‑gifted psychotherapist. He restores a sense of awe and mystery to an endeavor that all too often gets mired in the muck of jargon and categorization.... In addition to bringing the reader up close to his patients, and to a process often (necessarily) cloaked in secrecy, he gives the reader an un‑airbrushed picture of the therapist, warts and all.”

“Here is the naked therapist, stripped of the armor of god‑like omniscience, aware of his flaws.”

“Inspired.... Yalom writes with the narrative wit of O. Henry and the earthy humor of Isaac Bashevis Singer.”

“Wise, humane, stirring, and utterly absorbing.... Irvin Yalom’s book is charged with hope and generosity of spirit.”

“The vicissitudes of neurosis and its treatment have always provided irresistible material for dramatic narratives. In Love’s Executioner Yalom demonstrates that in the right hands, the stuff of therapy has the interest of the richest and most inventive fiction.”

“Dr. Irvin Yalom ... bravely steps into this chaotic void in Love’s Executioner... He brings understanding, order, and the ‘feel’ of the process of psychotherapy as few before him have done.”

“Dr. Yalom’s point is not to merely document psychological abnormality, it is to demonstrate that ‘it is possible to confront the truths of existence and harness their power in the service of personal change and growth.’ Read Love’s Executioner, and weep.”

“In Love’s Executioner I marvelled at Yalom’s courage in writing about therapeutic relationships which had not been a great success and also at his skill in bringing these encounters to life.”

“Irvin Yalom writes like an angel about the devils that besiege us. These beautifully wrought true stories go way beyond therapy; they are incisive and moving tales of life, by a wise psychotherapist.”