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Reading List · Therapy and the MindThe Best Books by Therapists
Therapy happens behind a closed door, which is exactly why books by the people who sit in the therapist’s chair hold such appeal. Psychotherapists, psychiatrists, psychologists and psychoanalysts see how ordinary people grieve, love, avoid and change, hour after hour, over decades. When they write for general readers, they translate that clinical experience into stories and ideas that help people understand themselves, their families and their relationships without needing a diagnosis or a textbook.
Every book here is non-fiction written by a clinician drawing on work with patients or clients: case stories, memoirs that move between therapist and survivor, and practical books on childhood, trauma and couples. One author, Gabor Maté, is a physician rather than a psychotherapist, and is described as such. The list mixes classics from the twentieth century with recent bestsellers.
Thirteen books by therapists
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone
Lori Gottlieb · 2019
Lori Gottlieb, a psychotherapist and licensed marriage and family therapist, starts seeing a therapist of her own, Wendell, after her boyfriend abruptly ends their relationship. Her sessions alternate with those of her patients: a grieving Hollywood producer, a newlywed with a rare cancer, a depressed seventy-year-old estranged from her children and a young woman who drinks heavily.
The book shows both sides of the room at once, which makes it a natural starting point for anyone curious about what therapists actually think during sessions. It appeared on the New York Times non-fiction bestseller list and was developed for television by Eva Longoria for ABC.
Read it if you want an honest, inside view of therapy from both the therapist’s and the patient’s chair.
Love’s Executioner
Irvin D. Yalom · 1989
Subtitled And Other Tales of Psychotherapy, this book presents ten case stories from Irvin Yalom’s practice. Each begins with a familiar problem such as grief, obsession or compulsive behaviour, and follows the therapy as it uncovers a deeper struggle with death, freedom, isolation or meaning. The title story follows a woman in her seventies obsessed with a former therapist.
Yalom is an existential psychiatrist and emeritus professor of psychiatry at Stanford, and he writes candidly about his own doubts and mistakes as a therapist. It is one of the best-known collections of therapy stories written for general readers.
Read it if you like true stories that read like short fiction and want to understand existential therapy.
The Examined Life
Stephen Grosz · 2013
Subtitled How We Lose and Find Ourselves, this collection of short chapters draws on the London psychoanalyst’s clinical work. The stories range from everyday moments, such as a woman daydreaming on the drive home or a young man who loses his wallet, to extreme cases, including a compulsive liar who persuades his wife he has cancer.
Grosz uses each case to ask why people act as they do, framed by the Socratic idea that the unexamined life is not worth living. The book spent its first three months in the top ten of the Sunday Times non-fiction bestseller list.
Read it if you want short, thoughtful chapters you can read one at a time.
Man’s Search for Meaning
Viktor E. Frankl · 1946
Viktor Frankl, an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, describes his years in Nazi concentration camps and what he observed about how prisoners endured. The second part introduces logotherapy, his meaning-centred approach to psychotherapy. First published in German in 1946 and in English in 1959, it has sold millions of copies in dozens of languages.
This is the foundational book of the genre: a clinician turning his own experience and his psychiatric training into a theory of why meaning matters for mental health. A 1991 Library of Congress survey named it one of the ten most influential books in the United States.
Read it if you want the classic account of finding meaning in suffering.
Read my full recommendation →The Choice
Edith Eva Eger · 2017
As a teenager, Edith Eger was deported to Auschwitz, where her parents were killed and she was ordered by Josef Mengele to dance. She survived, emigrated to the United States, and decades later earned a PhD in clinical psychology, specialising in post-traumatic stress. She published this memoir at the age of 89.
Eger alternates her own story with accounts of her therapy patients, whose struggles echo hers. Her central idea is that suffering is universal but victimhood is a choice. She became a friend of Viktor Frankl, which makes this a natural companion to Man’s Search for Meaning.
Read it if you want a survivor’s story that becomes a book about healing from trauma.
Read my full recommendation →What Happened to You?
Bruce D. Perry and Oprah Winfrey · 2021
Psychiatrist Bruce Perry, a senior fellow of the ChildTrauma Academy in Houston and a specialist in children’s mental health and neuroscience, talks with Oprah Winfrey about trauma, resilience and healing. Winfrey shares episodes from her own difficult childhood, and Perry explains what clinical experience and brain science say about how early adversity shapes people.
The conversational format makes Perry’s decades of work with traumatised children accessible to readers with no background in psychology. It suits readers who want to understand trauma through both personal stories and clinical explanation.
Read it if you want an accessible introduction to childhood trauma in conversation form.
Read my full recommendation →The Body Keeps the Score
Bessel van der Kolk · 2014
Psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk describes how traumatic stress affects the mind and body, drawing on his clinical and research work. He stresses the role of attachment and social environment in protecting against trauma-related disorders, and discusses approaches such as EMDR, yoga and other body-based therapies.
Few books by a clinician have reached as many readers: it spent close to 300 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Its science has also been widely criticised, with reviewers arguing that some claims about brain damage and treatment are not supported by current research.
Read it if you want to understand the most influential popular book on trauma, and the debate around it.
When the Body Says No
Gabor Maté · 2003
Subtitled The Cost of Hidden Stress, this book argues that chronic stress and repressed emotions can disrupt the nervous, immune and hormonal systems and contribute to illnesses such as cancer, multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis. Maté builds his case through patient stories and encourages readers to become their own health advocates.
Maté is a physician, not a psychotherapist: he ran a family practice in Vancouver, coordinated a palliative care unit and worked with patients facing addiction and mental illness. He belongs on this list because the book grows from that clinical work. Some readers find the evidence largely anecdotal.
Read it if you are interested in the mind–body connection and how emotions may affect health.
Read my full recommendation →The Drama of the Gifted Child
Alice Miller · 1979
Alice Miller, a psychologist who practised psychoanalysis in Zürich for two decades, examines how children who adapt to their parents’ needs lose touch with their own feelings. She links depression and grandiosity in adulthood to that lost childhood, and argues that emotionally accepting the truth about one’s childhood is the key to recovery.
First published in 1979, the book became an international bestseller after its English publication in 1981, also under the title Prisoners of Childhood. It is short and dense, and remains a reference point for later books on emotional neglect and difficult parents.
Read it if you want the classic psychoanalytic book on how childhood shapes the adult self.
Running on Empty
Jonice Webb · 2012
Subtitled Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect, this book connects how people were treated emotionally as children with how they function emotionally as adults. It is written for readers who feel empty, disconnected or unfulfilled without being able to point to anything that went obviously wrong in their upbringing.
Webb is a licensed psychologist with a PhD in clinical psychology and a private psychotherapy practice in Massachusetts. The book turns patterns she saw in her clients into a practical guide, and a companion title, Running on Empty No More, followed.
Read it if you suspect something was missing in your childhood but cannot name it.
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents
Lindsay C. Gibson · 2015
Clinical psychologist Lindsay Gibson looks at how emotionally immature, unavailable or self-centred parents affect their children, and at the anger, loneliness and sense of abandonment that can follow into adulthood. She describes four types of parent, emotional, driven, passive and rejecting, and offers ways to respond differently to them.
The book draws on Gibson’s work with adult clients and focuses on regaining a sense of self and building healthier relationships. It became a New York Times bestseller and is often recommended alongside Running on Empty.
Read it if you want practical tools for understanding and dealing with a difficult parent.
Mating in Captivity
Esther Perel · 2006
Belgian psychotherapist Esther Perel explores why desire often fades in long-term relationships, and introduces the idea of erotic intelligence. Originally subtitled Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic, the book argues that the closeness and security couples build can sit uneasily with the distance that desire needs.
Perel draws on her work as a couples and family therapist, including thirteen years as a clinical instructor at NYU School of Medicine. The book has been translated into 24 languages, and her podcast Where Should We Begin? brings listeners into real couples sessions.
Read it if you want a frank, cross-cultural look at desire in long relationships.
Hold Me Tight
Sue Johnson · 2008
Subtitled Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love, this book brings Emotionally Focused Therapy, the attachment-based approach to couples therapy that Sue Johnson co-developed, to general readers. It is structured around seven conversations that couples can have to understand their conflicts and rebuild their emotional connection.
Johnson was a clinical psychologist and couples therapist, and the book translates her clinical method into a practical guide. It suits couples who want something more structured than general relationship advice.
Read it if you want a practical, attachment-based guide to repairing a relationship.
Which book should you read first?
The best starting point depends on what you want from a book.
- For a first look inside therapy — Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb (2019)
- For classic case stories — Love’s Executioner by Irvin D. Yalom (1989)
- For meaning and resilience — Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl (1946)
- For understanding trauma — What Happened to You? by Bruce D. Perry and Oprah Winfrey (2021)
- For difficult parents — Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson (2015)
- For couples — Hold Me Tight by Sue Johnson (2008)
Where to go next
Frequently asked questions
What are the best books written by therapists?
Widely read examples include Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb, Love’s Executioner by Irvin D. Yalom and The Examined Life by Stephen Grosz, all built on stories from the therapy room.
What book is about a therapist going to therapy?
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb follows a psychotherapist who starts seeing her own therapist after a breakup, alternating her sessions with those of her patients.
Which books by therapists are about trauma?
What Happened to You? by psychiatrist Bruce D. Perry and Oprah Winfrey, The Body Keeps the Score by psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk and The Choice by psychologist and Holocaust survivor Edith Eger all focus on trauma and recovery.
Is Gabor Maté a therapist?
Gabor Maté is a physician. He ran a family practice in Vancouver, coordinated a palliative care unit and worked with patients with addiction and mental illness; When the Body Says No draws on that clinical work.
Was Viktor Frankl a therapist?
Yes. Frankl was a neurologist and psychiatrist who developed logotherapy, a meaning-centred form of psychotherapy introduced in Man’s Search for Meaning.
What books by therapists help with difficult parents?
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson, Running on Empty by Jonice Webb and The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller each look at how childhood relationships with parents shape adult life.
Pick the book that answers the question you are asking right now. The rest of the list will still be here when you are ready for the next one.
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