cover image Love's Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy: And Other Tales of Psychotherapy

Love's Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy: And Other Tales of Psychotherapy

Irvin D. Yalom. Basic Books, $19.95 (270pp) ISBN 978-0-465-04280-7

``It's the relationship that heals'' is a slogan psychotherapist Yalom claims as his ``professional rosary.'' In these 10 eloquent, engaging tales of personal transformation, each patient makes some headway in overcoming compulsions, depression, hyptertension or whatever--yet each also comes face to face with larger problems such as the inevitability of death or the existential need to give one's life meaning. Among those we get to know intimately are an isolated man who copes with terminal cancer by having promiscuous sex, an accountant who draws detailed graphs correlating his migraines with his bouts of impotence, and a taxicab driver still numbed by guilt and grief four years after her daughter's death. Yalom's humanism shines through in these wise, moving stories. Because he makes his own feelings and biases explicit, they become factors in the equation of therapeutic change. 50,000 first printing; $50,000 ad/ promo; author tour. (Sept.)