**BECOMING MYSELF: A PSYCHIATRIST’S MEMOIR BY IRVIN D. YALOM **
KIRKUS REVIEW
A distinguishedpsychotherapist reflects on his life and fulfilling career.
After a prolific string of publications including fiction, nonfiction, andcollections of case files from his practice, Yalom (Emeritus,Psychiatry/Stanford Univ.; Creatures of a Day: And Other Tales ofPsychotherapy, 2015, etc.) turns his perspective inward. Braided throughoutclient profiles are colorfully drawn anecdotes of his younger days as aself-proclaimed “disturber of the peace” whose disrespect and rebelliousnesswere always assigned primary blame for any unrest within the family household,including his father’s chest pain. Yet these are characteristics he regretsnow, as an adult, as well as not being able to connect more emotionally withhis frugal immigrant parents before time ran out. Valiantly leaving home formedical school meant seriousness and discipline, both of which Yalom mastered,even while making room for love. In smoothly conversational prose, the authorruminates on anger, his Jewish identity and the “ruins of my own religiouseducation,” the “encounter groups” of the 1960s, the evolution of hisrelationship with wife Marilyn, a stint in the Army, international sojourns,and his psychiatry practice, which eventually landed him at Stanford. In themost touching chapters, Yalom chronicles how he has wrestled with theintegrative role that death plays in the everyday lives of his patients (aswell as with his own mortality). At 86, the author, an avid bicycler and pokerenthusiast, still writes daily and sees patients in his San Franciscoapartment. The author believes their intimate histories affect how hepersonally views his present life and memorializes his past, a notion thatfortifies much of this fecund memoir. “My clients’ memories more often triggermy own,” he writes, “my work on their future calls upon and disturb my past,and I find myself reconsidering my own story.”
Fans of this eloquent and introspective author will welcome this innermostchronicle of his history, passions, and the keys to unlocking a fruitful life.
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