Creatures of a Day: and other tales of psychotherapy

by Irvin D. Yalom

Creatures of a Day lays bare the necessary task we each face, each day, to make our own lives meaningful.In his long and distinguished career, Irvin D. Yalom has pressed his patients and readers to grapple with life's two greatest challenges- that we all must die, and that each of us is responsible for leading a life worth living.In Creatures of a Day, he and his patients confront the difficulty of these challenges. 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, and reckons with his own life's inevitable end.Creatures of a Day show that the process of psychotherapy can create some of the most engrossing human dramas imaginable. It provides an intelligent, compassionate, and yet unflinching look at the human soul and all the pain, confusion, and hope that go with it. Suffused with humour, great artistry, and a profound humanity. Creatures of a Day lays bare the necessary task we each face, each day, to make our own lives meaningful.'Poignant and beautiful insights from a wise therapist look back on a career, a therapist who happens to be a writer I greatly admire - Creatures of a Day is just what the Doctor ordered!'-Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone'In Love's Executioner, Irv Yalom invented a new literary genre- narratives of psychotherapy with the pathos of great fiction and the insight of great essays. For those of us who learned so much about human nature and the human condition from Yalom, the publication of Creatures of a Day is a reason to celebrate.'-Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, author of How the Mind Works, and The Sense of Style'A poignant and bracing collection of stories based on Yalom's therapeutic work. Yalom, a published novelist with decades of clinical experience, offers vivid and generous descriptions of patients brought face-to-face with their mortality ... Watching "Irv", as his patients call him, convince patients to unpack their baggage is the chief pleasure of this book. He is overtly kind, sympathetic, and generous, but subtly merciless.'-Los Angeles Review of Books