Irvin D. Yalom

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Irvin David Yalom (born June 13, 1931 in Washington, DC ) is an American psychoanalyst , psychotherapist , psychiatrist and writer . He is Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at Stanford University and the author of numerous academic books and novels. Yalom is considered to be the most important living representative of existential psychotherapy . He is the recipient of the International Sigmund Freud Prize for Psychotherapy 2009.

Irvin D. Yalom (2014)

Life

Yalom was born in Washington in 1931, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants. His family emigrated from a small village called Celtz near the Polish border shortly after the end of World War I. He studied in Washington, DC and Boston and earned his doctorate in medicine in 1956. He began his academic career at Stanford University in the town of the same name, south of San Francisco .

He is one of the most influential psychoanalysts in the United States. One of his mentors was Jerome D. Frank . Yalom belongs to the group of psychoanalysts who have made the further developments of the much criticized psychoanalysis known and popular, which has led to a broader "rehabilitation" of psychoanalysis as an effective and contemporary method for deeply understanding human suffering and its psychotherapeutic treatment. Through his novels in particular, he was able to convincingly convey this to a broad audience outside of the professional world.

Irvin D. Yalom was married to the literary scholar and author Marilyn Yalom (1932–2019) from 1954 , has four children and is the author of various books. Yalom published standard psychotherapeutic works, psychoanalytic stories and novels, some with a philosophical background. His works on existential psychotherapy and group therapy are considered classics. Yalom lives in Palo Alto , California .

Act

In his book The Panama Hat or What Makes a Good Therapist Out , Irvin D. Yalom writes that he proposes a therapeutic pluralism to students in which effective interventions are fed from different therapeutic approaches. According to his own statements, he himself works mainly in an interpersonal or an existential frame of reference. His enduring interests are group therapy and existential therapy.

In group therapy he uses the interpersonal approach. It assumes that the "patients" despair of life because of their inability to develop and maintain satisfactory interpersonal relationships. In the 1970s, Franz Heigl and Annelise Heigl-Evers developed a similar group therapy approach ( Göttingen model ) independently of Yalom . Both approaches apply u. a. based on concepts by Wilfred Bion , Raoul Schindler and SH Foulkes .

His existential psychotherapy is based on the approach of Rollo May . This form of individual therapy is based on the basic conviction that many people despair of life as a result of a confrontation with the basic existential facts of being human (death, fear, loneliness, senselessness) and of human existence and in this case cannot be reached through cognitive-rational forms of therapy are. Yalom stands in the tradition of Sigmund Freud , but leaves his pessimism behind and adopts a humanistic stance. It ties in with psychoanalysts such as Sándor Ferenczi , Michael Balint , Wilfred Bion and Donald Winnicott , but also with Harry Stack Sullivan and Heinz Kohut . Yalom's development and attitude thus adapt to the general development within psychoanalysis of the last few decades towards an intersubjective or relational psychoanalysis .

The therapeutic work, as Yalom describes it, comes very close to a friendship between therapist and client. Against the background of common human problems, he strives for a relationship based on commitment, openness and equality. He is always looking for a conversation about the current quality of the relationship between himself and the "patient", on the one hand because he assumes that the difficulties that arise here often correspond to the problems that exist outside of the therapy, on the other hand because he has the experience has made that the perceptions of different people (here: therapist and "patient") in relation to the same situation can differ considerably, which can be brought to light through an open conversation. Ultimately, work takes place directly in the transference (instead of a classic transference analysis ) on the basis of a contemporary concept of abstinence , as can be found in the Göttingen model and in numerous other further developments in psychoanalysis. Due to his extensive life experience at work and as a client of various therapeutic approaches to which he has subjected himself in his life, Yalom usually has a greater overview. He must bear the main responsibility for ensuring that the therapy leads to helpful problem solutions.

The book Every day a little closer , which he published in 1974 with Ginny Elkins [pseudonym of his former client] in the form of a letter novel, is based on an unusual experiment. The client was a writer and her year-long participation in one of his therapy groups had been relatively unsuccessful. He therefore suggested individual therapy on the condition that, instead of paying him, she wrote a free-flowing, uncensored summary of each therapy session in which she expressed all the feelings and thoughts that she had not verbalized during the session. He did exactly the same. The exchange of notes every few months revealed the divergence between feelings and memories about the same sessions. First he used the notes in therapeutic teaching, then they were published as a book. The advice in his book The Panama Hat draws on notes from forty-five years of clinical practice.

plant

In particular through his work as a group therapist , Yalom has dealt with research on group psychotherapy as an academic teacher and increasingly carried out research projects himself. As part of this research, he primarily examined the topic: "What is therapeutic in the group?". The results provided (as is also the case with other therapeutic effects research) in particular information about the so-called “unspecific active factors”. Yalom tried to refine and specify these through further research so that these factors can be established by group therapists through targeted interventions. The impact factors described below relate to psychotherapeutic groups, but also apply to sociotherapeutic groups, albeit with extensive restriction to groups that have an interpersonal focus. B. for psycho-educational groups, group training (such as group training in social skills, relapse prevention in alcohol addiction, etc.) and many cognitive-behavioral group psychotherapies is not applicable.

The active factors according to Yalom are:

  1. Hope for healing
  2. Universality of suffering
  3. Communication of information
  4. altruism
  5. The Corrective Recap of the Primary Family
  6. Techniques of human interaction
  7. Imitative behavior
  8. Interpersonal learning
  9. The group cohesion
  10. catharsis
  11. The existential experiences (death, fear, loneliness, senselessness)

In particular, through the factors correcting “recapitulation of the primary family” and “ catharsis ”, the strong reference to psychoanalysis or to depth psychological foundations becomes evident, although these factors should be independent of psychotherapeutic procedures.

Works (selection)

Textbooks

  • Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy. Basic Books, New York 1970, ISBN 0-465-08445-1 ; 4th edition 1995, ISBN 0-465-08448-6 .
    • Translation: Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy. A textbook. Pfeiffer, Munich 1989; 10th edition: Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2010, ISBN 978-3-608-89020-4 .
  • Existential Psychotherapy. Basic Books, New York 1980, ISBN 0-465-02147-6 .
    • Translation: Existential Psychotherapy. Ed. Humanistic Psychology, Cologne 1989, ISBN 3-926176-19-9 .
  • Inpatient Group Psychotherapy. Basic Books, New York 1983, ISBN 0-465-03298-2 .
    • Translation: In the Here and Now: Guidelines for Group Psychotherapy. Btb, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-442-73236-0 .
  • The Gift of Therapy: Reflections on Being a Therapist. Piatkus, London 2002, ISBN 0-7499-2259-1 .
    • Translation: The Panama Hat or What Makes a Good Therapist. Goldmann, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-442-72848-7 .

Other

  • Love and its executioner and other stories from psychotherapy. Translated by Hans J. Heckler. Knaus, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-8135-6979-9 .
  • And Nietzsche cried ( When Nietzsche Wept , 1992). Translated by Uda Strätling. Kabel, Hamburg 1994, ISBN 3-8225-0294-4 . btb-Verlag, paperback ISBN 978-3-442-73728-4
  • The red couch. Translated by Michaela Link . Goldmann, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-442-72330-2 (original title "Lying on the Couch", a possible play on words that could be reproduced with "Lying on the couch / lying").
  • The trip with Paula. Translated by Hans-Joachim Maass . Goldmann, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-442-72640-9 .
  • A little closer every day. An unusual story. Translated by Lutz-W. Wolff. Goldmann, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-442-72712-X .
  • What Hemingway could have learned from Freud. Translated by Hans-Joachim Maass. Goldmann, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-442-73097-X .
  • Love, hope, psychotherapy. Translated by Gabriele Zelisko. Btb, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-442-73173-9 .
  • The Schopenhauer cure. Translated by Almuth Carstens. Goldmann, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-442-75126-8 .
  • Looking At The Sun: How To Overcome Fear Of Death. Translated by Barbara Linner. Btb, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-442-75201-0 .
  • A human heart. Translated by Lisa Jannach. Btb, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-442-75247-8 .
  • The Spinoza problem. Translated by Liselotte Prugger. Btb, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-442-75285-0 .
  • Because everything is fleeting: stories from psychotherapy. Translated by Liselotte Prugger. Btb, Munich 2015, ISBN 3-442-75457-7 .
  • How to Become What You Are: Memoirs of a Psychotherapist. Translated by Barbara v. Bechtolshein. Btb, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-442-75662-9 .

Movies

Awards and honors

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rollo May: Contributions of existential psychotherapy. In R. May, E. Angel, H. Ellenberger (Eds.): Existence: A new dimension in psychiatry and psychology . New York: Basic Books 1958, pp. 37-91.
  2. ↑ Previous Strecker Award Recipients
  3. ^ Rockefeller Foundation (Bellagio, Italy): The Mix Residents
  4. ^ The Commonwealth Club of California: The California Book Awards Winners 1931--2012
  5. ^ Oskar Pfister Award: Past Winners
personal data
SURNAME Yalom, Irvin D.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Yalom, Irvin David (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American psychiatrist and author
DATE OF BIRTH June 13, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Washington DC