Books like Existential psychotherapy by Irvin D. Yalom

The Gift of Therapy is a practical guide that compiles Irvin D. Yalom’s 35‑year experience as a psychiatrist into 85 thoughtful, often original therapeutic ideas for counsellors and patients.

When a seasoned psychotherapist faces mortality, he revisits a former patient who claims to have found healing through the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, leading to a clash of therapeutic approaches in a San Francisco group setting.

Ten tales, by Dr. Yalom, re-create breaking through a patient's uncertainty to the ultimate truth.

In this anthology of Irvin Yalom's most influential work to date, readers will experience the diversity of his writings with pieces that range from illustrative case studies, to theoretical models, and, of course, to literature. Included are carefully edited selections from Dr. Yalom's masterful writings on group and existential therapy as well as excerpts from Love's Executioner, When Nietzsche Wept, and Lying on the Couch. Dr. Yalom has written an introductory essay the Reader, new section introductions, and three new essays on narrative. In both his nonfiction and his fiction, Dr. Yalom uses the lens of psychotherapy to explore human nature and shows us that the line between the true and the imagined is not always easy to distinguish. What has driven Dr. Yalom from the beginning of his career is a powerful interest in narrative and it is this passion that ties these selections together. It is possible to come to The Yalom Reader from many different backgrounds and be richly rewarded. Readers of Dr. Yalom's clinical texts will be intrigued by the fictional works; general readers will gain a greater understanding of and appreciation for the practice of psychotherapy.

Existential Psychotherapy and the Interpretation of Dreams, by Clark Moustakas, presents a fresh model for the effective integration of dreamwork in humanistically oriented psychotherapy. The existential-phenomenological emphasis opens channels of conscious awareness that enable people in therapy and in everyday living to awaken to their own visions, hopes, and dreams. The internal shadows and fires of individual consciousness come to light in therapy and in dreams and invite self-resources and self-directions for change in self-growth and in significant relationships. An Existential Model is presented in detail as a guide to effective psychotherapy. With slight modification, the Model is also applicable to an understanding and interpretation of one's own dreams as well as the dreams of people who are in therapy. Through existential awareness and reflective thinking, the reader is encouraged to discover constructive challenges and paradoxes that connect dreams with waking life and lead to the discovery of creative possibilities for work and living. The existential approach to psychotherapy and dream interpretation is explicated through examples of phenomenological interviewing, use of description in lifting out horizons and core meanings, and analysis of core themes that intimately embrace the self. Existential philosophy recognizes mystery encompasses the unknown and unpredictable and asserts that regardless of past suffering and impoverishment, the potentials for health and well-being are within reach. The Existential Model offers a practical methodology and a set of guides for achieving these goals and finding a future that moves beyond the restraints and rejections that have resulted from choosing the wrong path for identity expression and selfhood. The person is the central catalyst for decision and action and retains control over her or his own destiny. The caring and competency of the therapist or the dream guide are projected into the person's world, where they evoke images and awarenesses that facilitate expressions of pain and loss, inspire a search for what is blocking growth, and eventually move the person in therapy or in dreamwork to express new feelings, new thoughts, and new ways of being, both internally and in relationships with others.