Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist's Memoir

The must-read new memoir from one of psychiatry’s most important figures.

Irvin D. Yalom has made a career of investigating the lives of others. In this profound memoir, he turns his writing and his therapeutic eye upon himself. He opens his story with a nightmare- He is twelve, and is riding his bike past the home of an acne-scarred girl. Like every morning, he calls out, hoping to befriend her, ‘Hello, Measles!’ But in his dream, the girl’s father makes Yalom understand that his daily greeting has hurt her. For Yalom, this was the birth of empathy; he would not forget the lesson.

As Becoming Myself unfolds, we see the development of the compassionate and insightful thinker whose books have been a beacon to so many. This is not simply one man’s life story – Yalom’s reflections on his life and growth are an invitation for us to reflect on the origins of our own selves and the meanings of our lives.

‘I have been a Yalom fan for the longest time – I always admired the deftness of his stories, the insights that came out of his obvious compassion and love for his characters. Of course psychiatrists are expected to have such insights, but it’s not the rule that they can convey that as beautifully as Yalom does in his fiction. I’ve always wondered, as any reader would wonder, about the author, about the balance between the professional and the personal and how out of that alchemy the writing emerged. Finally, in Becoming Myself, we have the answer, and it is wonderful, compelling, and as insightful about its subject and about the times he lived in as you could hope for. A fabulous read.‘
-Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting For Stone

‘Irv Yalom is the psychiatrist who thinks like a philosopher and writes like the fine novelist he also happens to be. Becoming Myself delivers not only the engrossing story of one exceptional individual’s life. It shines with revelations regarding life as it ought to be lived.‘
-Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, author of Plato at the Googleplex

‘Near the end of Becoming Myself, Irvin Yalom claims to be ‘a novice at growing old’ – to which I say, ‘Oh, please! – you’re as good at it as you have been at everything else.’ This is a candid, insightful memoir by one of the world’s most important and accomplished experts on the human soul.‘
-Daniel Menaker, author of The Treatment and My Mistake

Author Biography

Irvin D. Yalom is emeritus professor of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine. The author of two definitive psychotherapy textbooks, Dr Yalom has written several books for the general reader, including Love’s Executioner, Staring at the Sun, Creatures of a Day, and Becoming Myself; and the novels When Nietzsche Wept; The Schopenhauer Cure, and The Spinoza Problem. Dr Yalom lives in Palo Alto and San Francisco, California.