Reading List
The Best Psychologists and Psychoanalysts to Read
In 1899 a Viennese neurologist publishes a book arguing that every dream is the fulfilment of a wish. In 1951 the World Health Organization asks a London psychiatrist about homeless children, and his answer helps change the rules on visiting children in hospital. In 1989 a Stanford psychiatrist publishes ten of his patients’ stories, and readers who have never been in therapy finally see what happens in the room. These twelve psychologists and psychoanalysts wrote books that general readers can actually read, about love, fear, childhood and meaning, and each one comes with the single book to start with.
By Lisanne Swart · 12 books · From Freud to the therapy room · Updated October 2026
Quick answer
Start with Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning if you read only one, Irvin Yalom or Lori Gottlieb if you want to see therapy from the inside, or Erich Fromm if you want to understand love. The twelve below run from the founders of psychoanalysis to working therapists today, and four of them are women. For each one there is a short introduction and the book to read first.
The list at a glance
- 01Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud
- 02Carl Jung Carl Jung
- 03Karen Horney Karen Horney
- 04Erich Fromm Erich Fromm
- 05Viktor Frankl Viktor Frankl
- 06Carl Rogers Carl Rogers
- 07John Bowlby John Bowlby
- 08Alice Miller Alice Miller
- 09Irvin Yalom Irvin Yalom
- 10Daniel Kahneman Daniel Kahneman
- 11Esther Perel Esther Perel
- 12Lori Gottlieb Lori Gottlieb
Twelve psychologists and psychoanalysts, and where to start
Sigmund Freud
The founder of psychoanalysis, who argued that much of what drives us is unconscious and formed in childhood. Many of his theories have been rejected, but ideas such as repression and the talking cure changed how we think about ourselves. He fled Nazi-occupied Vienna for London in 1938.
Where to startStart with Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), a short book on why living together makes us unhappy. For readers who want Freud at his most readable.
Carl Jung
Freud’s chosen heir until they broke in 1913, Jung went on to develop the ideas of the collective unconscious, archetypes and introversion and extraversion.
Where to startStart with Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962), the late autobiography he wrote and dictated with Aniela Jaffé. For readers who want the inner life of the man before the theory.
Karen Horney
A German psychoanalyst who moved to America in 1932 and openly challenged Freud’s view of women, answering his “penis envy” with “womb envy”. She left the New York Psychoanalytic Institute in 1941 and founded her own association.
Where to startStart with Our Inner Conflicts (1945). For readers who recognise themselves moving towards, against or away from other people.
Erich Fromm
A psychoanalyst and social philosopher from Frankfurt who left Nazi Germany and settled in New York in 1934. Escape from Freedom (1941) asked why people give up their freedom to dictators.
Where to startStart with The Art of Loving (1956). For readers who suspect love is something you practise, not something you fall into.
Viktor Frankl
A Viennese psychiatrist who survived Theresienstadt, Auschwitz and Kaufering, a subcamp of Dachau, and founded logotherapy, built on the idea that our search for meaning drives us. The historian Timothy Pytell has argued that the book blurs how briefly Frankl was held at Auschwitz, a few days, before most of what it describes took place at Kaufering.
Where to startStart with Man’s Search for Meaning (1946; in English 1959). For anyone who has ever asked what the point is.
Carl Rogers
The founder of person-centred therapy and of the idea of unconditional positive regard, the acceptance of a person without judging their basic worth. Surveys of psychologists have ranked him among the most influential therapists of the twentieth century.
Where to startStart with On Becoming a Person (1961). For readers who want to understand what makes a good listener.
John Bowlby
A London psychiatrist and psychoanalyst whose 1951 report for the World Health Organization argued that young children need a warm, continuous bond with a carer. With Mary Ainsworth he laid the foundations of attachment theory. Critics have pointed out that his work was also used to keep mothers at home.
Where to startStart with A Secure Base (1988), his short late lectures. For readers who want the source behind every attachment-style book.
Alice Miller
A psychoanalyst who broke with psychoanalysis in the late 1980s and wrote about how childhood hurt is passed down the generations. Her son Martin Miller later wrote that his father beat and abused him and that she did not step in, so her life and her teaching do not always match.
Where to startStart with The Drama of the Gifted Child (1979; in English 1981). For readers who were the good, sensible child in their family.
Irvin Yalom
An emeritus professor of psychiatry at Stanford and one of the founders of existential psychotherapy, which works with death, freedom, isolation and meaninglessness. He also writes novels, such as When Nietzsche Wept (1992).
Where to startStart with Love’s Executioner (1989), ten stories from his practice. For readers curious about what really happens in therapy.
Daniel Kahneman
A psychologist who, with Amos Tversky, showed how predictably human judgement goes wrong, and won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002. He later admitted that the chapter on social priming in his bestseller relied on studies that have not held up.
Where to startStart with Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011). For readers who want to catch their own mind making mistakes.
Esther Perel
A New York couples therapist who grew up in Antwerp as the daughter of two Polish Jewish Holocaust survivors. Her podcast Where Should We Begin? lets listeners sit in on real couples’ sessions.
Where to startStart with Mating in Captivity (2006). For readers wondering how desire survives a long relationship.
Lori Gottlieb
A Los Angeles psychotherapist and journalist who writes the “Dear Therapist” column for The Atlantic. Her bestseller moves between her patients and her own sessions with a therapist.
Where to startStart with Maybe You Should Talk to Someone (2019). For readers who want to know what therapy feels like from both chairs.
Not sure where to start?
If you read only one
→ Read Viktor Frankl.
If you want to see therapy from the inside
→ Read Irvin Yalom or Lori Gottlieb.
If you want to understand your childhood
→ Read John Bowlby or Alice Miller.
If you want to understand love and desire
→ Read Erich Fromm or Esther Perel.
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Frequently asked questions about psychologists and psychoanalysts
Which psychologist should I read first?
Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning is short and moving. If you want to see therapy itself, start with Irvin Yalom’s Love’s Executioner or Lori Gottlieb’s Maybe You Should Talk to Someone.
What is the difference between a psychologist and a psychoanalyst?
A psychologist studies the mind and behaviour, in research or in therapy. A psychoanalyst works in the tradition Freud founded, focused on the unconscious and childhood, and may have trained first as a doctor or as a psychologist.
Which famous psychoanalysts were women?
On this list: Karen Horney, who challenged Freud’s view of women, and Alice Miller. Esther Perel and Lori Gottlieb are psychotherapists writing today.
Is it still worth reading Freud?
Yes, for the history of ideas: many of his theories have been rejected, but words like repression and the unconscious come from him. Civilization and Its Discontents is the shortest way in.
Is Man’s Search for Meaning accurate?
The historian Timothy Pytell has argued that the book blurs how briefly Frankl was held at Auschwitz, a few days, before most of what it describes took place at Kaufering.
Footnotes
- Kahneman wrote “I placed too much faith in underpowered studies” in a comment on the Replicability-Index post “Reconstruction of a Train Wreck: How Priming Research Went off the Rails” (2017).
- Timothy Pytell’s critique of Frankl’s camp account appears in his work on Frankl; the Viktor Frankl Institute has disputed it.
- In a study of the most eminent psychologists of the twentieth century by Steven Haggbloom and colleagues (2002), Carl Rogers ranked sixth.
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Freedom, death and meaning, on the page.
From the bookshelf
“The dream is the fulfilment of a wish.”
— Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams
More books I keep coming back to are on my personal bookshelf, and every month one of them goes out to the Night Owl Bookclub.
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