Tag: Therapy

The Story Hour by Thrity Umrigar (Literary Fiction — Audio book)

Writing: 5/5 Characters: 5/5 Plot: 4/5

A beautifully written (with fantastic audio reader) story about an Indian immigrant woman who attempts suicide (in the first chapter — this is not a spoiler) and the black therapist who is assigned her case. Their stories form an interlocking spiral as themes of betrayal, grief, and loneliness play out in both of their lives as the two become more connected than a typical therapeutic relationship warrants.

Lakshmi — the immigrant — is a complex character in a tired body with the loneliness incumbent with an uncaring husband and being cut off from her family home in India. Maggie — the therapist — is a black woman on the verge of an (ill advised) affair, married to a loving and caring Indian professor. Both have complex and well-articulated, deeply considered backstories that have a surprising amount of commonality.

The book is a study in interpersonal engagements of all sorts — the urges, the mistakes, the trust, the quest for redemption, forgiveness and for happiness and intimacy. Incredible breadth and depth. I liked every one of the characters and yet frequently grew angry with them for their all too human errors of judgement. At the very end, there is no specific resolution — highlighting the fact that life is not lived as a novel with a consistent narrative arc and closure.

I was completely engaged and could not stop reading, but there was a lot of pain to share, and I will need something light and happy to read before I venture back into another like it.

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb (Memoir)

This memoir is as gripping as a good novel.  Hall-of-mirrors style, we experience therapy from the perspective of the therapist with carefully selected stories that highlight both the therapeutic process and the impact on the therapist herself. At the same time, we’re along for the ride as Gottlieb enters her own therapy as the result of a (surprisingly) bad breakup. She has a real talent for insight — into herself and into others — and the training and background to understand that insight. Even better, Gottlieb can write — the prose is clear and succinct and gets to the essence of complex feelings, motivations, and awareness. My favorite one liner: “The nature of life is change and the nature of people is to resist change.”

This memoir is one of the bravest and most honest I’ve read. I never would have had the courage to bare my soul, warts and all, in such a genuine and authentic manner. The narrative embeds her personal story — the path through journalism and medical school to a combined career as therapist and writer — as well as relevant bits of the history of psychology. She references several psychologists — some famous, some new to me, and a few favorites — as she leverages their teachings in her own work. The one that hit me hardest was this quote from Victor Frankl, Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”

Apropos of nothing, another interesting tidbit: the countries with the most therapists per capita (in order) are: Argentina, Austria, Australia, France, Canada, Switzerland, Iceland, US. Would not have been my guess!

Did this book make me want to enter therapy? She included a definition that I hadn’t heard before — Counseling is for advice whereas therapy is for self-understanding. I’m always interested in self-understanding and working with a *good* therapist who has great skill and insight would be (I’m sure) both interesting and beneficial — but the process is long, expensive, and doesn’t appear to be very efficient — I think I’ll stick to my “self-taught” approach and continue with ongoing internal exploration.