Book Review: ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ by Viktor Frankl

This book is divided into two parts. The first part is an autobiographical account of Viktor Frankl’s time in concentration camps during the second World War, and the second part is a more academic exposition of the type of psychotherapy that he created, Logotherapy. He begins the book with an admission that ‘This book does …

Book Review: ‘The Adolescent Psyche’ by Richard Frankel

This book is filled with wisdom, and I think it would be helpful for any mental health professional working with adolescents (regardless of their preferred brand of therapeutic approach) so I’ll attempt to summarise its main points: The Freudian psychoanalysts were wrong to treat adolescence as primarily a return to infantile id drives/impulses (only with …

Book Review: ‘Re-Visioning Psychology’ by James Hillman

If a book had the power to redeem 2020 for me, this one would be it. It’s so refreshing to read a book that manages to change your mindset or show you old things in a new and surprising way, and this one succeeds at both. At the same time, the book gave form and …

Quotes from Freud (Standard Edition, Complete Works, Vol. XXI)

The Future of an Illusion (1927) ‘There are two widespread human characteristics which are responsible for the fact that the regulations of civilization can only be maintained by a certain degree of coercion – namely, that men are not spontaneously fond of work and that arguments are of no avail against their passions.’ (8) I …