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The Good Psychologist. Noam Shpancer (2010)

by Noam Shpancer(Favorite Author)

3.39 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0349123241 (ISBN13: 9780349123240)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Abacus Software

review 1: This book is less about a psychologist who is good than trying to work out the sort of a person a good psychologist (as opposed to a bad or mediocre psychologist) would be. In some ways it doesn’t read like a novel. For example, there is an outline of a series of lectures on psychology in this book. In the course of the story, it turns out that the psychologist in question – who is never named – has problems of his own. Well he would do, wouldn’t he? He’s not only human, which is bad enough, he’s studied psychology as well. If that wouldn’t fry your brain, what would?Rather than say anything more about it, here are a few quotations to give you the flavour of the thing.‘But the lack of response to shifting circumstances is an attribute of death.’ ‘The li... moree, it turns out, is not a bug in our software, but a feature of our hardware. And the good psychologist must get to know it, learn its ways.’ ‘The good psychologist knows that change, any change within known boundaries, is in itself therapeutically valuable because it shakes up the rug, ruffles up existing systems, and provides a new experience.’ ‘Anecdote and intuition, loyal paramours of the mythological psychologist, are the enemies of the good psychologist. 'The good psychologist needs to provide the client with a long enough rope so that the client can in due course help the psychologist out of the pit of his own illusions and theories.' The good psychologist resides, in a known sense, on the hyphen between the culture and the individual, and from this stance he must constantly examine both. All the while he also observes himself, his system of meaning and values. This process of examination will reveal to him that no one formula can capture the whole of human experience. Page 221From this last quotation it seems to follow that no one therapy can cover the ground either, a point made in one of the other books I’ve reviewed.There is also a story I like a lot, on page ninety-one.'There’s a story about two monks, an old master and his young eager apprentice, who meet a young woman by the river. The water is raging, the woman says, can you carry me over? The old monk lifts her up in his arms, takes her over, puts her down on the other side, and the monks continue their silent march. After a few hours, the apprentice can no longer contain his turmoil and alarm. He turns to his teacher and says: How could you take that girl in your arms? Don’t you know that such contact violates our laws? I, says the old teacher, left the girl by the river. You are still carrying her with you.’ All in all, though, this is less of a good novel than an intersting book.
review 2: The Good Psychologist by Noam Shpancer is a quiet, lovely, luminous book; a gentle treasure. The psychologist is treating a stripper afraid to strip, teaching a class where the brightest student is also the most disturbed, and trying to reconcile the needs in his private life. He has loved but perhaps not wisely. His paramour, a fellow psychologist, is married. They have a child together the psychologist has never met. As he engages his students and listens to the secrets of the anxiety ridden stripper, he begins to face the hollowness in his own life. less

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