Books
The Undertaking A Novel by Audrey Magee Finalist for the Baileys Women’s Prize Conversations about the difference between infatuation and love are commonplace in a therapist’s office. Many clients seek therapy when a relationship fueled by intense infatuation does not mature into love. It is often useful to explore one’s own patterns in relationships and…
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Can a marriage be saved following infidelity? Is it okay to cheat if a marriage has become sexless? If infidelity is discovered and a couple wants to stay together, how do they find their way through? Such questions are frequently raised in couples therapy if one or both partners have strayed. Ian McEwan’s 2014 novel,…
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What makes a marriage work? What makes a relationship last? How does work influence marriage? How does marriage influence work? How important is it to make time to see friends? These are questions that come up frequently in psychotherapy. Wallace Stegner’s 1987 classic novel on love, literature, friendship and marriage illuminates the timeless quality of…
Read More 257 pages, Simon and Schuster Molly Wizenberg’s blog, Orangette, was named the world’s best food blog by the London Times. Her lively 2014 memoir about her husband Brandon’s dream of opening a pizza joint in Seattle and what happens along the way says as much about maintaining a healthy, happy albeit imperfect marriage as it…
Read More Meg Wolitzer’s page-turning novel traces the experiences and relationships of six friends who meet as teenagers at Spirit-in-the-Woods arts camp in the summer of 1974. Wolitzer captures these glorious fifteen and sixteen year old souls with their musings, quirks, and complexities. Readers will relish their adolescent ability to be intensely vulnerable and real with each…
Read More Michael Cunningham, 2014, 272 pages Intimate relationships are a primary focus in psychotherapy. Through therapy, people examine their closest relationships in order to determine what aspects of their approach to others work well for them, and what aspects of their approach they might want to change in order to form healthier attachments. In order to…
Read More If you have tween or teen daughters, it is highly likely that you have already heard an earful about John Green’s bestselling novel and subsequently recently released film, The Fault in our Stars. Even if you do not have teens or tweens, you would have to be living under a rock to have missed the…
Read More “When given the choice between being right or being kind, choose kind.” R. J. Palacio 2012, 320 pages, Alfred A. Knopf It’s not every day that I read a book written for middle schoolers; however, both of my daughters tore through Wonder with such intensity that I grew curious. So, when their school principal…
Read More Esther Perel, 2007, 272 pages A mantra of my post-graduate training in couples, family and sex therapy was that when a couple is struggling in the bedroom, that struggle is a mirror for what’s happening outside of the bedroom. So, if you help a couple increase intimacy and enhance communication, and you employ the sex…
Read More THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS 2011, 338 pages, Random House, Vanessa Diffenbaugh It is a basic principle of most forms of psychotherapy that it is often essential to examine how formative childhood events and primary family relationships relate to current life experiences. If you are curious about or currently examining how your own past informs your…
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