Recently in my searching around second hand bookshops I've come across a few books which are fictional, but have a good role for a counsellor or psychotherapist in them.
Does anyone have any to recommend? I'm sick to death of reading "proper" counselling books, and hearing what intelligent authors/clients have written in their fiction is really illuminating, as well as entertaining.
I'll start with "Therapy" by David Lodge. The amazon review says
A successful sitcom writer with plenty of money, a stable marriage, a platonic mistress and a flash car, Passmore has more reason than most to be happy. Yet neither physiotherapy nor aromatherapy, cognitive-behaviour therapy or acupuncture can cure his puzzling knee pain or his equally inexplicable mid-life angst. As life fragments under the weight of his self-obsession, he embarks - via Kierkegaard, strange beds from Rummidge to Tenerife to Beverly Hills, a fit of literary integrity and memories of his 1950s South London boyhood - on a picaresque quest for his lost contentment, in an ingenious, hilarious and poignant novel of neuroses.
I enjoyed it!
Sounds interesting do you have a link?
I did go through a David Lodge period, David (is anyone not called David??), but somehow when "Therapy" came out I bought it and it didn't grab me. Just me personally.
Oh, I may have lost my connection but will try sending this anyway. It's an unusual genre. A serious book in it I was just trying to look the title up for is by Sebastian Faulks just a couple of years back.
V
Ah! "Human Traces" by Faulks - but it's set in the late 1800s, not being modern therapy.
V
Sounds interesting do you have a link?
Well, I don't want to act as an agent for Amazon, but just this once 🙂
Ah! "Human Traces" by Faulks - but it's set in the late 1800s, not being modern therapy.
V
Well, while I'm searching Amazon for Caroline... just ordered for £0.01 (plus £2.75 post and packing:rolleyes:) Thanks V.
Here is another one, coincidentally with the same title: Therapy, by Jonathan Kellerman. This author was a Child Psychologist, and many of his books are about his avatar "Alex Delaware" and his policeman friend Milo, as they go off in search of murderers and understanding. I think I'll order a few more, actually, while I'm in the mood.
This one (link for Caroline 😉 ) is around some rather suspicious therapists in private practice, and some of their clients (several of whom die in satisfyingly gruesome manners). Boundary issues abound?
Its a thriller!
I've read most Kellermans, including Therapy. I'd forgotten him. Having written about it, I had "Human Traces" by Faulks in my hands today and was about to buy it. It looked very heavy, opening it up! 😮 So I opted for "Ross Kemp on Afghanistan". (Since I've been there, I'm always quite interested in matters Afghanistan. It may be the most dangerous country or non-country on Earth, but it also has an impressive, if hidden, system of Sufism.)
V
Last I can think of at the moment is
"something to tell you" by Hanif Kureshi.
Its about a psychoanalyst from a fairly interestingly dysfunctional background, and has some real insights about therapy (and some rubbish, e.g. "a therapist thinks he knows what's best for you, but a psychoanalyst doesn't" being the one that still rankles a bit).
The psychoanalyst in the book has written a book "six patients in search of a cure" which I would have enjoyed reading more than this book, I felt, but it was still a good read.
Here is a review
"Ross Kemp on Afghanistan".
Books about the East End of Afghanistan will have to wait, for me. I still have about 140 Kellermans to get through that I've just discovered, before then. I've only read one book on Afghanistan, Caravans, by James A Michener. I went through a period of reading all his books, which were without exception, exceptional. The breadth of history and background he gave to all his subjects was just breathtaking. His preferred way of writing was to follow the lives of a family through history from ancient times to the present day, Unfortunately its out of date now, written in the 60s/70s I think, but still worth reading for anyone who wants some background to life in that country.
This isn't fiction, but as it's your field you may know the book I mean? About in the 1980s, not earlier, a psychotherapist/psychoanalyst lapsed into a deep depression which turned into a kind of 'madness', and he was institutionalised. When he emerged, presumably OK and seemingly under his own steam, he wrote quite a book, reasonably well-known by the 90s, about the horrors and bad treatment, notably the drugs, exposing how awful and inappropriate staff treatment of him was.
V
This isn't fiction, but as it's your field you may know the book I mean?
Not offhand, but when I come across it I'll return and post the name.
A book in a similar vein is "Madness of our Lives" by Penny Gray: a selection of short biographies/autobiographies of several people who have been through the mental health system in this country.
I couldn't read much of it at a time, it was that disturbing.
I came away from it thinking "However unsuited I am to be a therapist I feel sometimes, I'm streets ahead of that lot" so positive for me in a way.
Irvine Yalom is a great read, either his fiction or more academic work. You may already have heard of him, but in case not, he is a psychotherapist and professor of psychiatry, who has written several novels, and also personal reflections on his practice as a therapist. These, though not novels, tell the story of someone's life and journey through therapy in a very readable, and often touching way, and because they touch in his reflections on his practice are a form of storytelling.
I very much enjoyed Love's Executioner, very frank and refreshing, (a non fiction reflection on his work with clients) and Lying on the Couch, one of his novels, great humour, honesty and observations. Well worth a go!
Oh, and just remembered, counselling for toads, based on The Wind in the Willows, tells the story of Toad's experience of counselling, and is a wonderful book, a very gentle tale of a journey through a storm.
Elodie
I very much enjoyed Love's Executioner, very frank and refreshing, (a non fiction reflection on his work with clients)
Yes, I'f forgotten Yalom. I remember thinking that he and the other therapist would probably have been badly mauled by the BACP or Health Professions Council if that client had made a complaint about them, such is the world we live in.
He is a terrific storyteller, but he irritates me a bit because he writes widely on death and death anxiety, which he says we all have and which influences our lives, without ever giving any value to reincarnation beliefs at all, or the effects of the various meditatioons on death and impermanence. A bit rich seeing as he lives in California.
Here is John Rowan saying the same thing as me more effectively:
Trouble getting in the door today due to lots of books having been delivered :cool:.
In the current "Therapy Today" there are yet more ideas, so I'm not the only one who enjoys these.......
They include "Good Will Hunting" and "The Sopranos" but I'll post a more complete list when I, my brain, Therapy Today and the computer are all in the same place at the same time.
Frank Tallis wrote some books about a Viennese psychologist called Liebermann set in turn of the century Vienna; Freud figures as a character, Liebermann's mentor. They're not bad at all
Does Frasier Crane count?
If Jennifer Melfi (from the Sopranos) does then Dr Crane should certainly be considered. Can you imagine them both at a dinner party together? How would they get on?
Does Frasier Crane count?
Never heard of dr crane? Where can I find him/her?
I wonder if the eponymous "Frasier" was named after Dr Crane. 😮
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Ah, just looked, and they are one and the same. My son was a great fan of Frasier, and I used to like "Cheers."
Hello David
yes indeed Dr Frasier Crane is the same guy from both Frasier and Cheers - Cheers was a very good sitcom but Frasier is I think even funnier - the character Frasier is a good-hearted sort, but a colossally pompous ass.
Recommended viewing 🙂 not every episode is very good, but at its best it is very funny. It has a sort of Fawlty Towers quality of making u watch thru your fingers in horror and laugh too
It's funny how a few careers of people doing minor roles took off after Cheers - in addition to Kelsey Grammer who does Frasier (and the splendidly disturbed Sideshow Bob in the Simpsons) Woody Harrelson who played the nice-but-dim Woody (they couldn't even be bothered to give the character a name!) rocketed into stardom with Natural Born Killers and a number of other similar roles, and John Ratzenberger, who played the annoying Cliff the postman, has become something of a star doing cameo voices for high end animation(toy story, the incredibles, monsters inc, finding nemo etc) - he has a fantastic voice, very vibrant and rich
J
Ah! "Human Traces" by Faulks - but it's set in the late 1800s, not being modern therapy.
V
I read this book first of the pile. It was excellently written, I thought, I really came to care for the characters, to the point where I got really annoyed with the author for the sh*t he kept shovelling in their direction.
A good read. Nothing much in it about therapy, though, apart from an episode where a would-be therapist attributed all a woman's symptoms to psychological causes and thereby missed that the person was really rather ill. Actually, that part was so well written it was worth reading the entire book for.
So, thanks for that. I might have known it wouldn't be a light read!
I'm resurrecting this thread because I've come across "The Treatment" by Daniel Menaker. The eponymous subject is a course of Freudian psychoanalysis, delivered in the book by the self-styled "last Freudian" Dr. Ernesto Morales, a Cuban emigre practising in New York. There was a film made of the book, too.
The fictional Dr Morales was roundly criticised by the (real) New York psychoanalysis society in one of their reviews, but don't let that stop you reading this insightful, funny book.
As long as no-one reads this, I can say I felt more than a sneaking admiration of Dr.Morales, (whilst having no wish to become his client).
Fascinating thread - here's another addition: [url]Pat Barkers 'Regeneration' trilogy.[/url]
Fascinating thread - here's another addition: [url]Pat Barkers 'Regeneration' trilogy.[/url]
Hmm. I read the (book length, it felt like) wikipedia entry with a mounting sense of foreboding. I just don't like reading about war, particularly the first one - past life stuff here for me, as for most people: I think my generation has been very "lucky" to avoid major conflicts this time around. And three books of it, too. And the list of themes explored in the books (which began with "madness") didn't help.
I do realise that modern counselling itself came into being to help vietnam veterans come to terms with post-war life, but that doesn't make me any more enthusiastic to immerse myself in vicarious trilogy-length war traumas.
Well. Alison, I suspect I'll get it if it shows up in the second hand bookshops and libraries I frequent. I'll very probably get a lot out of it, after all that :eek:.
Hmm. I read the (book length, it felt like) wikipedia entry with a mounting sense of foreboding. I just don't like reading about war, particularly the first one - past life stuff here for me, as for most people: I think my generation has been very "lucky" to avoid major conflicts this time around. And three books of it, too. And the list of themes explored in the books (which began with "madness") didn't help.
I do realise that modern counselling itself came into being to help vietnam veterans come to terms with post-war life, but that doesn't make me any more enthusiastic to immerse myself in vicarious trilogy-length war traumas.
Well. Alison, I suspect I'll get it if it shows up in the second hand bookshops and libraries I frequent. I'll very probably get a lot out of it, after all that :eek:.
It is a long time since I read the books - 15 years, give or take - but I don't remember them being particularly heavy going, just fascinating with regard to the theories of the time and healing mental wounds. I don't go for war stuff myself very much and the first world war has definitely been 'overdone' in my opinion.
Ah, thanks again, Alison. I like the word "fascinating."
I'll look out for them