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From Amazon
There is plenty of lying going on in psychotherapy offices to be found in Irvin D. Yalom's novel Lying on the Couch, and the lying is of every type defined in your average modern dictionary. Among those doing the lying are Carolyn, who hopes to ruin the career of psychotherapist Ernest Lash because she believes his advice led her husband to seek a divorce. Then there is the gambler whose plan is to lure another psychotherapist into malpractice so he can sue and pay off his debts. In Yalom's world, the relationship between therapist and patient is a tricky one indeed, and it's sometimes hard to tell who needs advice and counseling more--the patient lying on the couch or therapist sitting nearby.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
A willingness to confess to his various mistakes in the course of treating patients made Dr. Yalom's 1989 nonfiction bestseller, Love's Executioner & Other Tales of Psychotherapy, endearing, but one hopes that this satire of the Bay Area psychiatric industry is not another mea culpa in disguise. The two psychiatrists at the center of Yalom's second novel (after When Nietzsche Wept) find themselves entangled in situations for which their clinical training could not have prepared them. Dr. Ernest Lash, who is, in fact, extremely earnest and given to wearing earth shoes and stained ties, decides to experiment with a new, more intimate therapeutic approach, unwittingly playing into the hands of Carol Leftman, a patient determined to ruin his professional reputation because he had encouraged her husband to leave her. Meanwhile, Ernest's former supervisor, the ambitious, self-important Dr. Marshal Streider, is fleeced by a charismatic con man masquerading as a patient. For help, Marshal turns to a lawyer?the very same Carol Leftman who's dogging Ernest. For both Marshal and Ernest, then, the absolute honesty they demand during the therapeutic hour is at odds with the professional ethic of confidentiality that binds both lawyers and shrinks. Yalom is exploring the jungles of what Ernest calls "wildcat therapy," in which therapists are unable to maintain the Olympian mantle of clinical disinterest in encounters with their patients. Whether this is good medicine or not, Yalom doesn't quite say. As absorbing as it is, the novel presents the moral or professional blunders of the analysts as the acceptable price of doing business. $50,000 ad/promo; author tour; Rights: William Morris Agency.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
Three times a week for the past five years, Justin Astrid had started his day with a visit to Dr. Ernest Lash. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Three times a week for the past five years, Justin Astrid had started his day with a visit to Dr. Ernest Lash. Read the first page
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Concordance
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Truly a masterpiece!,
By
This review is from: Lying On The Couch (Paperback)
This book is awesome. If you have ever wondered what it feels like to be in therapy, here is your answer. This book gives you the inside information about the problems that faces both the therapeut and the pasient. Besides that it is written in a manner that intertwines the characters involved. We hear about his patients, and the next you know he is the husband of another of his patients, or the wife of the therapists advisor. The complications that this causes makes it into a humoristic book unlike anything I have ever read.And the title alone, lying on the couch, is exceptional. It is the first clue into this naive therapist that truly believes that no one could lie to him. He is a good therapist, but he can't see this. So the conclusion is that the therapist, who thinks he can see what's going on, isn't much closer to the truth than the rest of his patients. And that's what makes this book so amusing. This is a must read for anyone that has been in therapy, or are thinking about going there. And for everyone else that wants to know what it is like. If you're in for a laugh, run to the store and add this book to your collection. I promise you it will be worth it!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A book for therapy patients and poker players,
By A Customer
This review is from: Lying On The Couch (Paperback)
I loved Irv Yalom's book. I am a poker player. I loved the way one of his patients(a compulsive gambler) gets his psychiatrist to go to a card parlour, and helps him figure out that he is losing because of a "tell". A great read even if you are not a poker player.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is a witty, insightful and intelligent novel.,
By
This review is from: Lying On The Couch (Paperback)
"Lying on the Couch" is a clever novel by Irvin D. Yalom, a therapist who has written a number of non-fiction books on psychotherapy. This work of fiction peers into the lives of various psychoanalysts and the people whom they analyze. The two main characters are Marshal Streider, a pompous psycholanalyst who is driven by a desperate hunger for fame, wealth and social position, and Ernest Lash, who is Marshall's student. Lash tries a novel approach in psychotherapy. He tries experimenting with an "honest" approach towards his patients. Yalom has fun dissecting the lives of Streider, Lash and their patients. The title, "Lying on the Couch," is a play on words. Yalom tells us that we often lie to our analysts and to ourselves, because lying appears to be easier than facing up to the truth about ourselves. He also probes some of the unconscious feelings that drive some people's self-destructive behavior. In addition, Yalom hilariously punctures the pomposity of jargon-spewing analysts who never use a one-syllable word if they can help it. Ultimately, Dr. Yalom poignantly shows that being true to ourselves and working through our childhood issues is a necessary step towards ultimate growth and fulfillment. This book is creative, literate, and often very funny. "Lying on the Couch" is a delightful entertainment for the thinking reader who is fascinated by the life of the mind.
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