Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed

Lori Gottlieb

Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

From a psychotherapist, and national advice columnist comes a thought-provoking new book that takes us behind the scenes of a therapist's world -- where her patients are looking for answers (and so is she). One day, Lori Gottlieb is a therapist who helps patients in her Los Angeles practice. The next, a crisis causes her world to come crashing down. Enter Wendell, the quirky but seasoned therapist in whose office she suddenly lands. With his balding head, cardigan, and khakis, he seems to have come straight from Therapist Central Casting. Yet he will turn out to be anything but. As Gottlieb explores the inner chambers of her patients' lives -- a self-absorbed Hollywood producer, a young newlywed diagnosed with a terminal illness, a senior citizen threatening to end her life on her birthday if nothing gets better, and a twenty-something who can't stop hooking up with the wrong guys -- she finds that the questions they are struggling with are the very ones she is now bringing to Wendell. With startling wisdom and humor, Gottlieb invites us into her world as both clinician and patient, examining the truths and fictions we tell ourselves and others as we teeter on the tightrope between love and desire, meaning and mortality, guilt and redemption, terror and courage, hope and change.Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is revolutionary in its candor, offering a deeply personal yet universal tour of our hearts and minds and providing the rarest of gifts: a boldly revealing portrait of what it means to be human, and a disarmingly funny and illuminating account of our own mysterious lives and our power to transform them.


From the Forum
  • Patient Identities, Memoir vs Fiction

    Of course the patients and their stories had to be altered a ton to be included, but I can’t help but wonder about John specifically and which TV shows he works on (I’m sure Lori truly did have a TV writer as a patient). And since the majority of details here had to be altered (or, more likely, are completely works of fiction inspired by real life) it makes me wonder about the line between memoir and auto-fiction - can this truly be a memoir when so much is fiction? Yes, the lessons and feelings are real, but isn’t that also true of auto-fiction?

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    I wish I could give this more than 5 stars. An absolute must read, I'll be recommending this to anyone and everyone for forever.

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    Wow, what a way to start off the year. This is one of the best books I’ve ever read, and I know that I’ll continue to think back on it often and remember the stories and lessons learned. The best books always stick with you in that way.

    I’m grateful that Lori Gottlieb wrote a book that isn’t just informative, but insightful, personal, and memorable as well. This book helped me see myself and others more clearly.

    While this memoir could easily have been heavy, it kept me laughing throughout. It didn’t take reading past the first few pages to see how funny and relatable Lori is. I hope to read more from her in the future.

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