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Editorial: Writing about counselling

Irvin Yalom is probably best known to readers for Love’s Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy, first published 26 years ago. Yalom was one of the first to use fiction as a vehicle for sharing his experiences of the client/therapist narrative and he did it – as we all know – extremely well.

I felt slightly apprehensive when opening his latest work: now in his early 80s, might he be losing his touch? But once I got stuck into Creatures of a Day, not only did I find it hard to put down, I also found parts of it very moving, entertaining (like the client whose life is radically changed not by therapy but by Yalom introducing him to a household declutterer) and, as a trainee psychotherapist, extremely useful.

In training I always find that watching videos of expert practitioners working with clients is a really useful way to learn, and I think this is equally true of reading Yalom’s fictionalised case histories. The appeal for me is the way he gives an honest and transparent running commentary of the process of each session, sharing very precisely his thoughts at key points as the therapy unfolds: the transference, self-disclosure, taking risks, feeling stuck, naming defences or resistance, bringing the relationship back to the here and now. Reading these accounts that so readily come alive through the intimate dialogue between client and therapist, I could easily imagine this book being adapted for the big screen. There are many dramatic moments where Yalom has only minutes left to say something helpful before the end of a session, as in our extract in this issue: ‘Yikes. What a blunder to have tried this. I could hear the minutes clicking by… and felt pressed to salvage some part of our hour together.’

Two other therapists in this issue have interesting things to say about their different approaches to fictionalising counselling. Maggie Yaxley Smith chose to create a cast of fictitious clients who became increasingly real to her – to the extent that she actually took her fictitious clients to supervision with her former clinical supervisor. Chris Rose, who wrote The Wednesday Group ´Ú´Ç°ùÌýTherapy Today, similarly found that her fictitious therapy group members developed an independent life of
their own. ‘It is as important to let the writing breathe,’ she writes, ‘as it is to let a therapy group do the same.’

Sarah Browne
Editor

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