Yalom's Cure

Filmmaker Sabine Gisiger's documentary profile on the life and work of psychotherapist and author Irvin D. Yalom explores the subject's major legacy: existential therapy. Along the way, the film looks at Yalom's relationship with his Polish immigrant parents, specifically the passivity of his father and harsh dominance of his mother (Yalom says he did not speak to her from ages 15 to 17). Yalom talks about finding shelter in a neighborhood library where he read every biography on the shelves, and recalls how college and medical school were a great challenge, given the focus that was required of his free-roaming curiosity. Yalom describes his required 700 hours spent in analysis (as part of his education in psychiatry) as an experience in learning what not to do with a patient, and his early work with cancer patients as a training ground for his emphasis on self-knowledge, honesty, and acceptance of mortality and isolation as drivers in life. Yalom—who was 80 at the time of filming (he's now 85), and is a professor emeritus of psychiatry at Stanford—also discusses his longtime marriage to writer Marilyn Yalom, who is also interviewed, along with the couple's four grown children and various grandkids. Most intriguing is Yalom's discussion of his work, centering on the need to illuminate the darkest corners in an individual's life, the inability to understand someone else if we do not understand ourselves, and the challenge of grappling with such core existential concepts as freedom and meaning. Highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (T. Keogh)