Lying on the Couch: A Novel [Hardcover]

Irvin D. Yalom (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1996

The highly respected author of Love's Executioner and When Nietzche Wept combines the authenticity of case history with the true artistry of fiction to create a novel in which an idealistic San Francisco therapist "invents" a new therapy--and outwits the scroundrels and skeptics who would do him in.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

There is plenty of lying going on in psychotherapy offices to be found in Irvin D. Yalom's novel Lying on the Couch, and the lying is of every type defined in your average modern dictionary. Among those doing the lying are Carolyn, who hopes to ruin the career of psychotherapist Ernest Lash because she believes his advice led her husband to seek a divorce. Then there is the gambler whose plan is to lure another psychotherapist into malpractice so he can sue and pay off his debts. In Yalom's world, the relationship between therapist and patient is a tricky one indeed, and it's sometimes hard to tell who needs advice and counseling more--the patient lying on the couch or therapist sitting nearby.

From Publishers Weekly

A willingness to confess to his various mistakes in the course of treating patients made Dr. Yalom's 1989 nonfiction bestseller, Love's Executioner & Other Tales of Psychotherapy, endearing, but one hopes that this satire of the Bay Area psychiatric industry is not another mea culpa in disguise. The two psychiatrists at the center of Yalom's second novel (after When Nietzsche Wept) find themselves entangled in situations for which their clinical training could not have prepared them. Dr. Ernest Lash, who is, in fact, extremely earnest and given to wearing earth shoes and stained ties, decides to experiment with a new, more intimate therapeutic approach, unwittingly playing into the hands of Carol Leftman, a patient determined to ruin his professional reputation because he had encouraged her husband to leave her. Meanwhile, Ernest's former supervisor, the ambitious, self-important Dr. Marshal Streider, is fleeced by a charismatic con man masquerading as a patient. For help, Marshal turns to a lawyer?the very same Carol Leftman who's dogging Ernest. For both Marshal and Ernest, then, the absolute honesty they demand during the therapeutic hour is at odds with the professional ethic of confidentiality that binds both lawyers and shrinks. Yalom is exploring the jungles of what Ernest calls "wildcat therapy," in which therapists are unable to maintain the Olympian mantle of clinical disinterest in encounters with their patients. Whether this is good medicine or not, Yalom doesn't quite say. As absorbing as it is, the novel presents the moral or professional blunders of the analysts as the acceptable price of doing business. $50,000 ad/promo; author tour; Rights: William Morris Agency.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 369 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; 1st edition (August 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465042953
• ISBN-13: 978-0465042951
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.7 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (57 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #397,934 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An amazing work both literary as well as therapy related., September 9, 1999

By 

THOMAS I ROMAN - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lying on the Couch: A Novel (Paperback)

This "novel" by Dr. Yalom is a true masterpiece. After having read his other popular books, I hesitated reading a "novel" , but what an amazing surprise... This work is really integrated, has great unity as far as structure goes and the subject area in which Dr.Yalom truly excells is really informative for therapists, analysts as well as patients. It gives insight not into just multiple relationships among doctors and patients but also among therapists themselves - patients in their relationships with their relatives and friends. It is an excellent guide to insight, analysis and problem-solving techniques as well as ethics, honesty and humanity. It should be required reading for courses and seminars that train analysts, therapists as well as counsellors and ultimately patients and friends and relatives of patients in therapy. Read this book -- honestly!

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars YOU COULD FINISH THIS BOOK IN ONE COUCH SESSION!, October 7, 2000

By 

Lisa Sloane (Gaithersburg, Md) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lying on the Couch: A Novel (Paperback)

I really enjoyed the dynamics of this book and appreciated the easy writting style! It was a great change of pace from the literature and classics that I usually read with out being overly soap-operish. I thought that the book intuitvley explored relationships at many dimensions and in many situations. It was an interesting point that the best of the best can so easily decieved. I have often wondered if a therapist would know if a patient was lying or not. I thought the book was well written and easy to get into. I don't think there was anyone that could not relate to one of the many characters at some level. I liked how, in every person, the good and bad sides of that character were revealed. The book was pretty rivoting and susspenceful, though I thought that one of the characters we had grown to know and love would somehow come out to be the villan- and that was a little dissapointing- but overall- I really enjoyed this book. It was great to bring the revered 'doctors' down to our level to realize that they really aren't too much different from the people that come to them for help!

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Truly a masterpiece!, February 5, 2002

By 

Marianne sundin Hestnes "Norwegian Icequeen" (Oslo, Norway) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lying on the Couch: A Novel (Paperback)

This book is awesome. If you have ever wondered what it feels like to be in therapy, here is your answer. This book gives you the inside information about the problems that faces both the therapeut and the pasient. Besides that it is written in a manner that intertwines the characters involved. We hear about his patients, and the next you know he is the husband of another of his patients, or the wife of the therapists advisor. The complications that this causes makes it into a humoristic book unlike anything I have ever read.
And the title alone, lying on the couch, is exceptional. It is the first clue into this naive therapist that truly believes that no one could lie to him. He is a good therapist, but he can't see this. So the conclusion is that the therapist, who thinks he can see what's going on, isn't much closer to the truth than the rest of his patients. And that's what makes this book so amusing.
This is a must read for anyone that has been in therapy, or are thinking about going there. And for everyone else that wants to know what it is like. If you're in for a laugh, run to the store and add this book to your collection. I promise you it will be worth it!