Lying on the Couch

A Novel

By: Irvin D. Yalom

Narrated by: Tony Pasqualini

Length: 15 hrs and 42 mins

Publisher's summary

From the best-selling author of Love's Executioner and When Nietzsche Wept comes a provocative exploration of the unusual relationships three therapists form with their patients.

Seymour is a therapist of the old school who blurs the boundary of sexual propriety with one of his clients. Marshal, who is haunted by his own obsessive-compulsive behaviors, is troubled by the role money plays in his dealings with his patients. Finally, there is Ernest Lash. Driven by his sincere desire to help and his faith in psychoanalysis, he invents a radically new approach to therapy - a totally open and honest relationship with a patient that threatens to have devastating results.

Exposing the many lies told on and off the psychoanalyst's couch, Lying on the Couch gives listeners a tantalizing, almost illicit glimpse at what their therapists might really be thinking during their sessions. Fascinating, engrossing, and relentlessly intelligent, it ultimately moves listeners with a denouement of surprising humanity and redemptive faith.

©2014 Irvin D. Yalom (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

My best on Audible!

Can’t tell you how sad I am that I’ve finished this book-like losing a new friend! Not only a great story but quite informative on the workings of psychotherapy! Tony P. Is just so talented-I hope he narrates many more books!! Thanks for a great ride!!

Good insight into the world of psychology

Very engaging book, easy to listen for any audience interested in the psychology domain. Even though very few phrases are the of specific terminology, the book can also be interesting for professional therapists.

Love it

Light to read and interesting angle to therapy. Wish there is more twist to come

great book!

wish there was a sequel! would make a great tv series. as a therapist this is an excellent training manual.

A stimulus towards inner reflection

My first -- but not last -- book by this author, it provides insight into how a brilliant psychoanalyst (the author himself, as well as his main character) can discover the inner motivations for the way we think and act. All this is done within a fabric of fine humor and even elements of adventure and suspense. I cannot exaggerate how much I enjoyed this work. The reading was rather slow and awkward and I set the controls to 1.25x.

Excellent!

This was a very good listen that held my full attention. I'm looking forward to immediately moving on to another book by this author!

Hang in there!!!

I really had a tough time with the beginning of the book, but stayed with it. I was rewarded with a delightful surprise and loved the book!
I ended up realizing that the beginning was laying out a character map for the rest of the book, which was necessary to the whole plot. At first I found the narrator annoying but then started to appreciate his voice changes for each character!
Loved this book!!!

Great book

This book was a joy to read. The author was able to show the benefits of psychotherapy and how important it is to find the right person who is knowledgeable and caring.
It also shows how even the therapist doing great work may suffer personal problems.
I was a therapist and enjoyed every detail in the story.
A must read for anyone interested in this field

Was worth it by the end

This isn’t my usual style of book, but seemed a little intriguing so I went for it. It honestly took me a while to get into it and I almost gave up, but by the end I was glad I stuck it out. Lots of characters to keep up with, but the relationships always found a way to intertwine at some point and there is some insight and humility one can learn from the characters. Performance was great. The reader found a way to create unique voices for the many characters.

Dramatic satire

This grand satire on psychotherapy came out in 2014. It focuses on the lives of a few interlinked psychotherapists in San Francisco. 

The principle thread of the book is transference and countertransference, the sometimes erotic attachment that can build between a patient and therapist or vice versa. The book opens with one therapist talking to another about an incident in which a beautiful woman patient claimed to have fallen in love with him. The therapist, at 71, decided to accept the woman's passion and reciprocate as a part of therapy. The therapist is now facing expulsion by the local institute of psychotherapy.

The novel then follows the therapist listening to this story, Ernest, as well as two others through their relationships with patients and peers. Ernest is targeted by a woman who was married to a man Ernest had been treating and has now demanded a divorce. She tries to entrap Ernest in a sexual relationship. Young Seymour is a new therapist still being supervised who believes in trying to bring new and creative methods to a profession that accepts new ideas slowly. Marshal is a therapist who is obsessed with his income and investments and risks his standing when he accepts an investment tip from a patient. 

It's an interesting portrait of a profession and it becomes clear that, for all the various concerns the doctors may have, one that seldom comes up is whether a patient is being helped. Trained in methods that can take years many see their incomes endangered by insurance companies who limit visits to 5 or 6 a year. Some have given up therapy to do medication management. In all cases they find daily challenges to their oaths and integrity through daily interaction with people at their most emotionally vulnerable. 

To add to these stresses are the politics of any profession in seeking more prestige than peers, either through income or position in professional associations. Because of the limits of insurance and the cost of therapy it has, in most cases, become a treatment for the rich, making some therapists feel out of place with or envious of the people they treat.

At times it's a sexy book, at other times it reads like a crime story or a revenge tale as each doctor faces various demons in himself and his patients. The book as a whole is a hilarious portrait of people working within a field that is torn between modern medicine and its roots in Freud and Jung. It's sophisticated and perfectly paced and one of those books that book clubs are made to devour.