Publisher’s write-up:
‘Meet Lori Gottlieb, an
insightful and compassionate therapist whose clients present her with all kinds
of problems. There’s the struggling new parents; the older woman who feels she
has nothing to live for; the self-destructive young alcoholic; and the
terminally ill 35-year-old newlywed. And there’s John, a narcissistic
television producer, who frankly just seems to be a bit of a jerk. Over the
course of a year, they all make progress. But Gottlieb is not just a
therapist–she’s also a patient who’s on a journey of her own. Interspersed with
the stories of her clients are her own therapy sessions, as Gottlieb goes in
search of the hidden roots of a devastating and life-changing event. Personal,
revealing, funny, and wise, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone opens a rare
window onto a world that is most often bound by secrecy, offering an
illuminating tour of a profoundly private process.’
Maybe You should Talk to Someone
is a collection of experiences from the clinical psychologist Lori Gottlieb,
the experiences which include her personal struggles, her sessions with
patients (I believe the names are changed for confidentiality) and with herself
being a patient dealing with a personal situation where she approaches a
therapist. The book has four parts – but there is no particular theme for each;
and every chapter deals with her session with a particular patient or her experience
with her therapist.
The book begins on her personal
side, on her unable to deal with the breakup she had with her boyfriend.
Through a recommendation from her friend, she meets Wendell Bronson – who is
her therapist throughout the book. Her patients include John, a television
producer – highly temperamental and to whom most people are ‘idiots’, Charlotte
– a young woman who has trouble in her relationship and takes alcohol to cope
with it, Julie – a woman in her 30s and diagnosed with cancer and Rita, a 69-year-old
who has given herself another year to live. There are a few other patients whom
there were passing references but were not repeated.
This book starts with describing
what therapy is (and what it is not) – describing her everyday job, her office
and how different Wendell’s office was, which caught her off guard at first.
This clears scepticism and apprehensions many might have over therapy.
Millennials were branded as the therapy generation which I would say is good
– and this book can provide an insight into what it means to be in therapy,
which could be required given the mental state of many people during the pandemic
(across generations). I liked the way how her relationship with her patients
progressed – especially the one with John, who seemed impossible to deal with initially
but eventually, she could connect with him and looked forward to the sessions
with him. It was also the same case with her therapist Wendell, who had often
deployed some unorthodox methods to bring her to reality and refused to budge
when she wanted someone to confirm her righteousness following the breakup.
Some of the concepts that the
book talked about was very interesting – especially the Italy – Netherlands analogy
that was used by the writer to one of her patients; when you are in a place you
do not want to be (here, the example was – planned a trip to Italy, boarded the
wrong flight and ended up in The Netherlands, but the latter is a wonderful
place too and must be explored and has a lot to offer and is better to enjoy
that rather than brood over what has been missed). The writer herself seems to
have had a very interesting life, a single mother – who worked in the entertainment
industry, then tried out at medical school before deciding to become a clinical
psychologist – and she introduces each of these phases in different parts of
the book (non-linear) where the reader could unpack her personality little by
little.
My concern with the book was that
I felt that it was at times directionless – what was she trying to say through
her book? Her personal struggles? The struggles of her patients? Her experience
with the therapist? A lot of it was brought out in the initial stages and many
phases in between seemed redundant till the end when she decided to reveal the
revelations on most of the patients. I also felt that she occasionally
engineered a fitting end for each of the characters mentioned in the book –
because therapy often requires
a lot of time and is a continuing process rather than one that has a definite
end. Here, I am making the assumption that the only change the writer has made
to these persons are their names, whereas one could speculate whether all of
them were fictitious to begin with. The book could have also perhaps had more
men, the only men in all of it were John, her ex, Wendell and her son – that could
also be because there are more women in the profession and women tend to seek
help more than men.
Just to add my opinion, which is not entirely
related to the book, is that therapy is something that anybody could benefit
from (regardless of whether you are facing mental health issues or not, like
how we have a general health check up with the GP even when we are not sick) –
and it is good that such books dispel a lot of misconceptions and apprehensions
that surround the practice.
To conclude, I would say that the book was a
good read, well written and easy to go through for those not in the field, not
many technical terms are thrown around. I would award the book a rating of
seven on ten.
Rating –
7/10
Have a
nice day,
Andy
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