Love's Executioner Audiobook By Irvin D. Yalom cover art

Love's Executioner

Preview

Get this deal Try for $0.00
Offer ends January 21, 2025 at 11:59PM ET.
Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 3 months. Cancel anytime.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Love's Executioner

By: Irvin D. Yalom
Narrated by: C.M. Carlson
Get this deal Try for $0.00

$14.95/mo. after 3 months. Offer ends January 21, 2025 11:59PM ET. Cancel anytime.

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $24.95

Buy for $24.95

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

About this listen

The collection of 10 absorbing tales by master psychotherapist Irvin D. Yalom uncovers the mysteries, frustrations, pathos, and humor at the heart of the therapeutic encounter. In recounting his patients' dilemmas, Yalom not only gives us a rare and enthralling glimpse into their personal desires and motivations but also tells us his own story as he struggles to reconcile his all-too-human responses with his sensibility as a psychiatrist. Not since Freud has an author done so much to clarify what goes on between a psychotherapist and a patient.

The audio version of the book includes an exclusive interview with Dr. Yalom.

©1989 Irvin Yalom (P)2013 Echo Point Books & Media, LLC
Essays Psychology Nonfiction Mental Health Existential Psychotherapy

What listeners say about Love's Executioner

Highly rated for:

Captivating Stories Insightful Narratives Engaging Storytelling Thought-provoking Tales Smooth Voiceover
Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    937
  • 4 Stars
    148
  • 3 Stars
    27
  • 2 Stars
    14
  • 1 Stars
    8
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    773
  • 4 Stars
    140
  • 3 Stars
    36
  • 2 Stars
    9
  • 1 Stars
    13
Story
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    818
  • 4 Stars
    116
  • 3 Stars
    18
  • 2 Stars
    12
  • 1 Stars
    7

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Educational story-telling win!

I wasn't sure this book would hold my attention, although I love the subject. I was wrong. The client stories, and Yalom's sharing of what these brought up for him, and reflections on what he learned were absorbing. It's excellent nonfiction for those with an interestest in psychology or counseling, and a great learning tool for those doing this work.

The only downside was the production quality was truly terrible and distracting. The stories are a bit intense and have really profound endings that deserve a moment. However, there isn't even a normal pause at the end. Generally, when starting new chapters, Audible does a good job of inserting a bit of a break, even if just one or two seconds. The lack of transition in this recording was like one long run on sentence. The last word of the chapter was barely out of the narrator's mouth when the start of the next chapter began. It was jarring, and I often had to pause the book and give myself a moment.

There were also obvious splices where words were inserted later, so the entire flow and tone of the narration would jump on a word. This may have been because the narrator pronounced so many of the psychology terms incorrectly, but they didn't do a very smooth fix. It wasn't awful, just something that I noticed as slightly distracting.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Great novel about psychotherapy.

Loved to listen to this novel. The story does show it was written 30 years ago but the themes are relevant to today's culture.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Raw. Real. Refreshing.

Raw. Real. Refreshing. Thank you for such an amazing work. This meant a lot to a new Therapist starting on this journey in her middle age.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Espectacular read

Personal, incisive, honest and exposing. I enjoyed every single story and the connections that each patient had with my own fears, shame, anger and disappointments. Yalom's candid observations about himself were so meaningful as well. Wow...What a gift of a book!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

8 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Couldn’t stop listening!

Driving to and from daily activities became a joy with this audio book. Exquisitely written highly recommend. This book not only offers a peak behind the therapist doors, it also gives you a peak inside ones own life finding a bit of personal relevance in many of these stories.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Masterful & Insightful

Absolutely fantastic! Irvin Yalom’s writing style makes all the stories interesting; his self revealing is truly masterful and insightful—helpful and encouraging to Therapists of any age, as well as humans of any age who enjoy the inward journey.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Excellent!

Excellent reading, Yalom again delivered a great book with extraordinary and touchy stories that get right to the core.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Excellent

Thoroughly enjoyed this book. Highly recommend it. Made Housecleaning a lot easier to do today!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

The Messy Surgical Suite and Surgeon-Prostitute

Yalom’s books are accomplishments and worth reading if you have interest in the practice of psychotherapy or the purchasing of therapeutic services. I do not see these as books full of wisdom but as messy surgeries described by an experimental surgeon. In total, they suggest the questionable and uneven value of talk therapy. Why is there talk therapy? In my opinion, therapy has grown in popularity because of societal problems worsened by traumas of our modern lifestyles (isolation, lack of intimacy, lack of validation, insufficient skills to cope with external demands, lack of safety). In a better word, people would find the support and skills for like amongst people who love them, not robotic prostitutes. I have read this book two or three times, so I am invested in it. The ethical issues presented by Yalom inspire discussion and debate and help patients to see the emotional life of a therapist and how this one therapist measured his lifetime performances. He uses a ruler that favors his therapy organ. One topic (of many) I wonder about: if a psychotherapist has a universal prejudice, is he selfish and wrong-headed to accept patients that affect him negatively? For example, if a therapist is secretly disgusted by fat ladies, would it not be better to refer the patient elsewhere? Many doctors have the ethical wisdom to refer people they cannot serve (maybe youth, the elderly, borderline patients, transsexuals) elsewhere. Even if the practitioner eventually feels the outcome was positive for the patient, isn’t the selfishness of the therapist and dishonesty of the therapist a process contamination? Isn’t self-interpreted success by a therapist so subjective as to be a worthless assessment? I am someone who could be called a fat lady. Is the burden on me to ask a therapist if they are prejudiced? Would I ever, as a naïve consumer, even suspect that I should “interview” a therapist on this question? I am someone who might have been a fat lady therapist-in-training. Should I suspect that my instructors might have impeded my progress because of “universal” fat prejudices? What about other “universal” prejudices? How about anti-Semitism? Is that somehow a prejudice that can be justified as a “universal” like the fat lady prejudice was/is condoned? Well, at least there are practitioners who clearly denote the faith populations they serve. Counter-transference transparency as a teaching and self-catharsis tool speaks to ethical decisions that were likely mistakes. I project onto Yalom sinfulness as Yalom makes my heart hurt; I wonder if the firing squads in my therapy were based on issues of ugliness, weight, parenting, marriage, or other prejudices. Did prejudices mislead and hurt me in the long run? Did I share my heart’s tenderness with men who looked down on me with disgust and took my money in the process? Is my brokenness worsened by their actions and encouragements? How could Yalom assess his ethical choices as not without negative consequences? Is it a “universal” that all patients must “change?” Is there ever a patient that is less in need of change than the therapist? Is there ever a patient who needs something other than change? Perhaps safety? Perhaps validation that they are complete and meaningful people? Perhaps a contrary opinion to offer dissent to the people who criticize the patient in horrible ways? Is the need of the therapist to effect change driven by insurance reimbursement schemes? Is the therapist’s goal more about his own desire to create someone new or about the patient’s goals? If patients create their own problems, therapists likewise create their own problems with their patients. The therapist goes away with the gold of the patient in his pockets even when no dollar is charged, so the problems created by the therapist are enriching no matter what. The orientation of the therapist to cause change is not one for which the therapist is accountable. If the therapist precipitates bankruptcy, risk-taking, divorce, isolation, homelessness, alienation, broken spirits, or career changes that are negative, the therapist can walk away without any guilt or responsibility and say that it was all the patient’s doing. In the event of disaster, the patient is left alone to pick up the pieces. Maybe, as a masochist, I will revisit Yalom’s books from time to time.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

You Can’t Make This Stuff Up

The saying, “You can’t make this stuff up” lives in the cases Irvin D. Yalom shares with us. Considering that not much action happens in most of the stories, each has its own way of reaching out and touching you, deeply. Some stories don’t just touch, they grab and hold on. We all, each of us, struggle. In excellent narrative form, Yalom consistently weaves this thread throughout and between the stories. This connected commiseration binds the reader/listener to the perspectives of both the therapist and his patients, while it also keeps the reader/listener in full appreciation of the art of narrative, simply for the sake of story, which in this collection happens to be true and, as such, more intriguing.

Please note, I did not pay attention to the narrator’s by line before engaging in the listen— I know, shame on me. The certainty that the voice in my ear was author Irvin D. Yalom remained fully in tact until the writing of this review. Narrator C.M. Carlson speaks the trials in this book with the ease and connectedness of a person who has known firsthand knowledge of and experience with each patient. Carlson delivers a quintessential voiceover experience— one that is free of a grating voice; over dramatization; insufficient pitch or enunciation; poor or non-existent character distinction; and most difficult of all (in my humble opinion), detectible gaps between story and narrator. I dropped a star because in several areas, extraneous background noise injects itself into the production. Had the noise been more strategically placed, it would have worked well as chapter markers, which was exactly what I thought it was at first. The noise occurs more frequently in the first few stories than the latter. It took me a while to figure out that the rather jilting interruptions were jet engines. This is another prime example of why Audible should add an “Editing” or “Production” rating category. Since there is none, and because the likelihood that Carlson was aware of his proximity to an airport and the correlating noise level, I’m knocking off what could have been a perfect narration score.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

30 people found this helpful