While today’s mental health care environment may not be supportive of existential exploration for its own sake, this section offers nuggets of wisdom that many therapists will find of use, especially those working with populations for whom end-of-life issues are less distal realities. In the second section (Chapters 41‐51), Yalom addresses existential themes in therapy, such as death anxiety, search for meaning in life, and the paradoxes of personal freedom.

Examples of chapter titles from this section include: “Be Supportive,” “Therapist and Patient as ‘Fellow Travellers,’” and “Use Your Own Feelings as Data.” Yalom is refreshingly unapologetic in the weight he places on the therapeutic relationship. While written from an interpersonal and existential theoretical framework, the lessons in this section focus on the importance of those “nonspecific” factors which catalyze the work of all therapists. The first and largest (Chapters 1‐40) section of the book explores the relationship between therapist and patient, here-and-now process issues, and therapist self-disclosure. The 85 ideas and techniques discussed in this book are organized loosely into sections.

Yalom describes the text as a resource for beginning therapists and their patients however, it seems more useful a guide for novice and possibly more seasoned psychotherapists. The book, presented in short, succinct chapters, is full of tips presented as reminders, obstacles to avoid, and lessons learned from the author’s wealth of knowledge regarding the psychotherapeutic milieu. The Gift of Therapyis Irvin Yalom’s attempt to distill his forty-five years of psychiatric practice into a guidebook for therapists and their patients.

The Gift of Therapy by Irvin D. Yalom