Great Books Volume 3: Divergent Classics


Great Books Volume 3: Divergent Classics


Here’s a list of books that are well worth reading, written by fathers/mothers in the field, but that are a bit more specific (not quite so much emphasis on “how therapy works as a whole”). These tend to be a bit newer, and a bit shorter, if that has been something that’s kept you from reading along so far! You’ll see some of our favorite authors return on this list, as well…

 

  • Man’s Search for Meaning (Viktor Frankl)
    • Short and incredibly powerful. More personally beneficial than clinically useful, which is why Doctor and the Soul made the first list
  • Love is Never Enough (Aaron Beck)
    • Although this is about working with couples, it’s a good cognitive therapy text without having to read Cognitive Therapy for Depression (although that’s a good one, too). Prisoners of Hate is also awesome!
  • Sex Without Guilt (Albert Ellis)
    • Sure, there are plenty of resources to learn REBT, but why read them when you can learn it while listening to Ellis pontificate about sex five decades ago?! (There’s also an updated version which is shockingly similar to the first edition!)
  • Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams (Eugene Gendlin)
    • Hands down, the best dream interpretation book I’ve ever read, and it also really exemplifies the down-to-the-ground humanistic, phenomenologically-oriented theory of therapy
  • Emotional Awareness (Dalai Lama and Paul Ekman)
    • A brilliant, easy-to-read dialogue that covers the basics of universal emotional experience and gives insight into the real Buddhist tradition that the West has marred
  • Behind the One Way Mirror (Cloe Madanes)
    • If you were interested in Jay Haley’s Strategies of Psychotherapy, you’ll like this case-study rich exploration of strategic family therapy
  • The Family Crucible (Carl Whitaker and Augustus Napier)
    • This would be a treatise on systems-oriented family therapy if it were a huge, boring tome. Instead it’s a lively narrative that follows one family’s journey. You may end up with more questions than answers, but that’s ok!
  • Waking The Tiger (Peter Levine)
    • The book that effectively birthed Somatic Experiencing and other body-focused trauma therapies. This is readable on a client level, but still has a good science background. May change the way you see the whole mind-body connection, not just with trauma.
  • Flow (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)
    • Really useful for those clients who needs more of a coaching or consultation style, or who have any kind of performance concern (professional, athletic, even relational). Very clear concept, well elaborated, easy to incorporate into your own life and into therapy
  • Gifts Differing (Isabel Briggs-Myers)
    • Great secondary text on Jung’s personality theory and great primary text on MBTI. So much more depth than what you learned in your assessment class, and it’ll give you useful constructs to work with, even if you don’t care for the actual instrument.
  • The Schopenhauer Cure (Irvin Yalom)
    • Existential classic in a very readable narrative form. Also, lots of good stuff about group therapy, all demonstrated rather than explained.
  • On Encounter Groups (Carl Rogers)
    • THE book on process groups. It’s brief and, if you’re a highlighter, prepare for more yellow than white – it’s so rich!

 

I really don’t mean to fill your bookshelves and/or drain your wallet. It’s just that they’re all SO GOOD. Comment below if you’ve read one of these and you want to recommend it for people to begin first! 

 

 

 

 

Undiscovered Self Jung


Undiscovered Self (Carl Jung)


I love reading. And I’m such a psychology nerd that some of my favorite things to read are the classic texts written by the fathers and mothers of psychology and psychotherapy. So, in case you might want to read some of these – I’ll give you some glorious snippets as I come across them to entice you. (And for those who really don’t want to read these kinds of things, maybe still some good quotes to spice up your consultation meetings and help you feel psychologically erudite.) ?

Carl Jung’s The Undiscovered Self: The Dilemma of the Individual in Modern Society (1957)

This is a tiny, punchy little book! Coming in at just 112 pages, it’s pretty easy to read and fits nicely in a purse or laptop bag! Here’s one of my favorite lessons:

Individual reality can’t be expressed by statistical averages; every therapy client is a completely unique creature and needs to be treated as such.

The more a theory lays claim to universal validity, the less capable it is of doing justice to the individual facts. Any theory based on experience ins necessarily statistical; that is to say, it formulates an ideal average which abolishes all exceptions at either end of the scale and replaces them with an abstract mean. This mean is quite valid, though it need not necessarily occur in reality. … The exceptions at either extreme, though equally factual, do not appear in the final result at all, since they cancel each other out. (p. 7) … While [the average is] reflecting an indisputable aspect of reality, it can falsify the actual truth in a most misleading way. … Not to put too fine a point on it, one could say that the real picture consists of nothing but exceptions to the rule, and that, in consequence, absolute reality has predominantly the character of irregularity. … There is and can be no self-knowledge based on theoretical assumptions, for the object of self-knowledge is an individual – a relative exception and an irregular phenomenon. (p. 8) If I want to understand an individual human being, I must lay aside all scientific knowledge of the average man and discard all theories in order to adopt a completely new and unprejudiced attitude. …If the psychologist wants not only to classify his patient scientifically but also to understand him as a human being, he is threatened with a conflict of duties between the two diametrically opposed and mutually exclusive attitudes of knowledge, on the one hand, and understanding, on the other. This conflict cannot be solved by an either-or but only by a kind of two-way thinking: doing one thing while not losing sight of the other. (pp. 9-10)

That’s all I’ll give you here, but you should read it for these other gems:

  • How communism and capitalism both devalue the individual while purporting to do the opposite
  • How religion really exists through experience only, not dogma
  • The problem with ignoring your shadow and the good that can come from it
  • How art prophesies cultural shifts

 

Yes! All of that in this teensy, tiny book. Enjoy!

Comment below if you’ve read this book, or any Jung, and give your favorite quotes!

 

 

 

Great Books Volume 2: Indispensable “Psychology” Books


Book List Volume 2: “Psychology” Books


Ok, I promised a follow-up post about great books by primary authors. There are too many to just do one additional post, so this one will be focused on “psychology” proper. These aren’t the most useful books, maybe, for psychotherapy, but they’re outrageously important in terms of fundamental psychological knowledge. Enjoy!

 

  • Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Sigmund Freud)
  • Psychopathology of Everyday Life (Sigmund Freud)
  • Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (Carl Jung)
  • Principles of Psychology Volumes I and II (William James)
  • Games People Play (Eric Berne)
  • Theory of Human Motivation (Abraham Maslow)
  • Beyond Freedom and Dignity (BF Skinner)
  • The Making and Breaking of Attachments (John Bowlby)
  • The Neurotic Personality of Our Time (Karen Horney)
  • Mind: A Journey to the Heart of Being Human (Dan Siegel)
  • Change: The Principles of Problem Formation (Paul Watzlawick)
  • The Lucifer Effect (Philip Zimbardo)

I have a bunch more books I’d like to list, because I think they’ll be amazing. But I’ll practice what I preach: NEVER recommend a book you haven’t read. More to come!

Comment if there’s a book you think I missed for this post! Or if you have ever recommended a book to a client that you haven’t read and it came back to bite you! Haha!

 

 

 

 

Great Books Volume 1: Indispensable Psychotherapy Classics


Great Books Volume 1: Indispensable Psychotherapy Classics


By far and away, one of the most common questions I get from students and supervisees is “what should I read to learn more about xyz?” Great question! And I love answering it, as well as teaching how to identify a good source (maybe that’s a good idea for a later post!).

I love to read books in the field, and I especially love to read the founding fathers and mothers of psychology and psychotherapy. I think this might come from having my own learning influences that emphasized primary source material, and also definitely from teaching Theories of Counseling and Psychotherapy. Textbooks never do justice to the real authors.

Definitely, in some later posts, I’ll talk some about specific books in more detail. Here, I’d like to give you a list of what I think are the best primary source books for psychotherapists. I’m defining “best” here as a combination of most foundational and most useful (so you’ll notice that Freud doesn’t make the list, even though he’s FREUD. And other favorites like William James’ Principles of Psychology. Sigh. Another day.) I’m also going to (painfully) limit myself to one per author.

 

  • On Becoming a Person (Carl Rogers)
  • What Life Could Mean to You (Alfred Adler)
  • The Undiscovered Self: The Individual in Modern Society (Carl Jung)
  • Your Many Faces (Virginia Satir)
  • The Gestalt Approach and Eye Witness to Therapy (Fritz Perls)
  • Focusing (Eugene Gendlin)
  • I’m OK, You’re OK (Thomas Harris)
  • Warning: Psychiatry Could Be Hazardous to Your Mental Health (William Glasser)
  • Strategies of Psychotherapy (Jay Haley)
  • The Doctor and The Soul (Viktor Frankl)
  • Life Without Fear (Joseph Wolpe)

 

Ok, I can already tell that future lists are imminent! There are SO many books that I’m having trouble not listing! But start with these. You’ll be glad you did!

Comment below and let me know the book you think I missed!