„We are all creations for the day”

Dmitry Leontyev read at our request the book of Irwin Yaloma „All of us creations for the day, and other stories”.

“Irwin Yalom definitely brought to perfection a special genre – the story of an experienced psychotherapist about the meetings taking place in the office, where he accepts customers. This genre of psychotherapeutic stories arose only a few

decades ago. By the twist of intrigue, the unexpectedness of turns and the dynamics of what is happening, these stories are quite comparable to the best examples of the detective genre. Only the intrigue here is special – it concerns the events that occur not around us, but in the soul of the client, in his inner life.

„We are all creations for the day, and other stories”. Translated from English Ekaterina Wulfson and others. Moscow Institute of Psychoanalysis, 240 with.

A psychotherapist, even a yalom, not a wizard, he continues to study at 82, and again and again asking himself the question: what really helps? And finds unusual forms and ways to tell about what he understood in his profession, and, most importantly, that he could not understand.

The new book is written in the genre of his favorite – that it can give a reader who first discovered Irwin Yaloma? Can not give anything – there is never a guarantee, as in any meeting at all. But, of course, she offers an understanding of the essence of real deep psychotherapy. This process does not mean communication with an all-knowing expert who reads all the secrets of the soul as an open book. On the contrary, genuine psychotherapeutic work is built on relations between two imperfect mortal beings, and only thanks to this it bear fruit, often contrary to all expectations. Psychologist is not the one who knows the answers to all questions, but the one who knows how to look for them. And all the answers are stored only in the soul of the client, and the maximum that a psychologist or psychotherapist can do (but this is a lot) is to help clear the rubble on the way to them and help the client move towards them, and not from them, as we are most often weAnd we do.

But besides craft, the book opens the depths of life. It differs from other books by Yalom in that almost all stories in it are somehow connected with the challenges of old age and death. Not everyone is admitted that these topics concern them, however, as the author shows on several bright examples, the attitude to death can have a decisive effect on our life from a young age. The ancients taught not to be afraid of death – when she comes, we will no longer be. But modern psychology clarifies: death often penetrates into our lives long before its end. And depending on how well we realize this and how ready to recognize its reality and inevitability, it either poisons us for many years, or, conversely, makes life brighter and deeper, forcing you to feel more responsible for it. To be on the side of life means not to escape from the thought of death, but to take it to life. Details by Yalom „.

Irwin Yalom, one of the creators of existential psychotherapy. He is the author of autobiographical bestseller “Treatment of Love” (class, 2012), “when Nietzsche cried” (Eksmo, 2010) and serious scientific books (among them – “Existential Psychotherapy” (Eksmo, 2004).