‘After some six decades of therapeutic practice and writing, I learned in a new and meaningful way how we humans — whether we’re in the cool, distanced medium of Zoom, or in the heat of real life — can create a startlingly honest and heartfelt connection that in a single hour can change one’s life.’
What does ‘the father of group therapy’ do at the age of 90, when he is still advising patients in the therapy sessions that have been his life’s work, and yet must face his increasing frailties and even his own mortality? Rather than melt into retirement, Dr Yalom develops another revolutionary approach.
In Hour of the Heart, Dr Yalom captures profound moments with his patients that happen in the span of just one hour, with people he will never see again. Taking place over two years before and during the Covid-19 pandemic, and amid Dr Yalom’s grief over losing his wife, these sessions would, as Dr Yalom writes, ‘help to sustain my client and would profoundly alter my vision of what psychotherapy can do’.
For any fans of Dr Yalom’s work, and for therapists and for those in training, Hour of the Heart is a collection of deeply moving personal stories that will tap into how powerful authentic human connection can be. While these one-hour sessions are, in many cases, just the start of these patients’ journeys, Dr Yalom’s insights, and his willingness to open himself up to his patients in a way rarely seen in therapy, are truly illuminating.
Praise for A Matter of Death and Life:
‘A Matter of Death and Life is so much more than a book. It is an indefatigable love story. It is a text that traverses past and present. It is exquisite, candid, and vulnerable — absent the too-common defenses of artifice and pomposity — as it approaches the untenable pain of separation and unyielding yearning of loss. Every person would benefit from multiple readings of this intelligently relatable book, both to confront dying as we inch toward our own mortality and, perhaps more importantly, the grief when one so beloved precedes us in death. I am deeply enriched for having absorbed this intimate narrative, as I wipe the tears from my eyes. Irv and Marilyn’s love story, ending in the tragedy of endings, is yours, mine, and all of ours.’
Dr Joanne Cacciatore, author of Bearing the Unbearable
Praise for Creatures of a Day:
‘Irvin Yalom has produced a book of such piercing depth that to enter into it is transformative. You feel less like you are reading Creatures of a Day than that it is reading you. Only a handful of books can accomplish such a feat. Give praise that one more has entered this rare and precious list.’
Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, MacArthur Fellow and author of Plato at the Googleplex and Betraying Spinoza
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Praise for Creatures of a Day:
‘I’ve been a deep admirer of Irvin D. Yalom’s writing — in fiction and nonfiction — for many years. In Creatures of a Day he brings together his profound sense of human suffering and joy with a novelist’s eye for detail, for narrative moment. These tales of therapy ring with truth, inviting us to consider the most pressing (moral, spiritual) questions with awe, with hope for transformation. A moving and original work.’
Jay Parini, author of The Last Station
