Lying on the Couch : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: A lot to Think About
Review: While it took a bit of energy to get into the book, I really enjoyed it once I began to sort out the characters. I have recommended it to many friends who have all found it interesting and one who agrees with me that it would make a great movie (without Barbra Streisand please). I think even if you aren't a psychotherapist, you can place yourself in any of these real-life ethical positions and empathize with the characters' struggles. I found the ending to also be very satisfying and am looking forward to reading Dr. Yalom's other fiction in the future.

Rating:
Summary: Therapy??
Review: With no past therapy experience on any Therapist couch, I felt terrified with the experiences of the Therapists, not to name patients. I believe the usefulness of the treatment but I am very much interested in the professional procedures, personal handling with private life influences, influences of other training, ikebana, poker, jogging, overall I found very interesting and very helpful. We are conservative people on the other side of the globe, passing all our life with single spouse at this end, and some experiences are really shocking since we presume that these are exaggerations, and normal couples live like us. I still believe that.

Rating:
Summary: Lacks most elements of a Novel
Review: You know I'm not into a book when I'm still trudging through it weeks later. It's been 3 weeks and I'm still barely through to the middle of "Lying on the Couch"; I've been taking up other reading material regularly to entertain me in the meantime: Agatha (always entertaining!) and lately, even the commercial inserts from the Washington Post.

Simply said: this book is pretentious, boring, and trite. The author is some sort of actual psychiatrist, so there is a lot of good information for psych-wanna-bes, about the history of psychiatry, the current practices and psychiatric community (ie, how doctors get along with patients, how doctors get along with doctors, etc). That's all great and all and maybe the issues brought up are quite important (ie: transference, abuse, emotional instability, the importance of integrity in the profession of psychiatry, etc. This book tries to take on EVERYTHING! in such a way that the story is disconnected and poor in development of any sort). Most significantly this novel lacks the important elements of a NOVEL:

- good character development (it's fragmented and I can't tell anything about the characters -- there's too many of them and they're all pretty much the same)

- plot (wtf is this story ABOUT? as a STORY? And, if it's just meant to be a commentary, it's certainly not a mediocre one by any means -- take up Reviving Ophelia or I never Promised You a Rose Garden as good commentaries on the psychiatric community.

- effective writing (it reads like a technical manual; this makes sense considering the author is a psychiatrist, and not a writer; it''s certainly NOT POORLY written, but it's not poetic, it lacks style, and fails to captivate)

"Lying on the Couch" lacks climax, characters, and style. I am sad I wasted my time on this book -- unlike other books I have rated poorly based on their literary merit (but which still proved to be slightly entertaining), this book provided me with no new information, and had little to no entertainment value.