Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13329 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Customer Reviews

Yalom reached a target, I couldn't see
I found it hard to put this book down. I read it in evey spare moment, until it was finished. Philosophy often poses the queston, 'how should we live'. The beauty of this novel, is it weaves many different perspectives on this question. Firstly it has the lives of the characters in the theapy group. How they are attempting to change themselves based on the fact that, how they act in a therapy group situation, is how they will act in the real world. If they can analyse and change, how they act in the group they can identify their problems and combat them. Secondly Yalom uses a character Philip Slate as modern day version of Arthur Schopenhauer. He becomes a mouthpiece for the philosophy of Schopenhauer, focusing on how Schopenhauer thought we should live and his pessimistic account of human existence. To add a futher dimension, biographical accounts of Schopenhauer's life are added and selected quotes begin each chapter. Although certain view-points are seen more sympathetically than others, different characters expess doubt and alternative opinions. We are not just force-fed Schopenhauers bleak opinions. I think that the book does two things, firstly it criticises psychotherapy for ignoring the fagitily and inherent weakness/ anxieties of the human condition. Our proplems are not all the result of individual neurosises. At the same time it highlights the fact that philosophical speculation on how we should live and how we view the world are heavily influenced by individual concerns, and personal past-experiences. This is just an overview, its well worth reading the book to find as it touches on subjects relevant to everyone. Yalom has created a book that any mere biped can understand, but leaves no easy answers.

A must for anyone interested in group psychotherapy, and a good read too
The Schopenhauer Cure may not be the great novel that When Nietsche Wept is but it is a brilliant text. As a fictional account of group therapy at its best, it offers excellent insights into group dynamics and the way that a skillful group analyst can guide and encourage them to unfold. There are sections of the book that read like therapeutic versions of Plato's Symposium, where the dynamics of the characters, enable them to discover voices within themselves that they would not have known otherwise.

The book's central character, Dr Julius Hertzfeld, a group analyst with a year to live makes his final year of weekly meetings with a group of patients his last will and testament. The accounts of what goes on during these sessions are utterly compelling, the best feature of the book. The presence in these group sessions of a patient from Hertzfeld's past, Philip Slate (a meaningful name for those familiar with 'microcosms'), a self-confessed sex addict who found solace and a cure for his addiction in the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, is what gives them their unforgettable quality. Slate does not preach Schopenhauer, he lives him or at least tries to do so. The presence in the group of a victim of Slate's earlier addiction makes forces Slate to put his philosophy of life to the test. In the course of the therapy sessions, we rediscover the central characters afresh, share some of their preoccupations and struggles.

Two features of the book left me with more mixed feelings. The account of Julius, a man who has a year of life, is not as rich as that of the other characters. He comes across through the idealizing lenses through which his patients see him, or maybe Irvin Yalom, a fellow-psychotherapist, choses to portray him. When all patients confess a hidden part from their past, Julius, prompted by Philip, also makes a confession but it seems anodyne and defensive to the point where even cursory self-analysis would suggest that much more is hiding there. Julius's idealization of his dead wife also seems to conceal more than we are let in on. His attempt to live with the knowledge of imminent dying is only half-developed in the novel. What, however, is excellently portrayed is how his patients learn to live with their therapist's death, without experiencing him as a 'corpse', someone contact with whom is painful or embarrassing.

The other thing I found somewhat less compelling are the chapters that take us back to the life, thought and work of Schopenhauer. As a genre, it reminded me of Kundera's, episodic return to the world of Goethe in Immortality, but it does not work so well. Schopenhauer is a curious philosopher - I am not sure that anyone can get to know him through these brief excursions into his life. A misanthrope who came to advocate compassion, a fame-hunter who excoriated fame, a truly great thinker who disclocated Western philosophy from its firm pedestal of LOGOS and sought to relocate it on the WILL, he needs far more time and patience to understand than is available to Yalom. All the same, this is a formidable achievement and a must for anyone interested in group psychotherapy.

Fascinating Until the Very End
As a psychiatrist, now newly retired, who has read most of Yalom's books, including his standard textbook on group therapy, I knew more or less what to expect in terms of the descriptions of group process. What surprised me was the heavy interlarding of both biography and exegesis of the pessimistic and misanthropic Schopenhauer, surely one of the least understood and oft-lampooned philosophers -- I'm reminded of that line from one of Ira Gershwin's lyrics: "My evenings were sour/Spent with Schopenhauer" -- whose writings are quoted, in translation, extensively to make certain points. As one of the group's participants says late in the book, the quotations are highly selected to make a certain kind of point, and many of Schopenhauer's other writings that contradict those quotations are conveniently passed over. Still, it's a daring literary conceit and one that Yalom very nearly pulled off. One certainly admires his daring is attempting it.

As a novel, one comes to care for the characters -- with some exceptions -- and the story carries one along. Unfortunately, the last fifty pages or so feel arbitrary, casually tossed off, and thus disappointing. One senses that Yalom cares for his characters, toward the end, as little as Schopenhauer cared for 'human bipeds,' to use his term.

I am glad to have read this novel. Yalom is an interesting writer. I do wish it had been better edited, though.