Here are 100 books that Becoming Myself fans have personally recommended if you like
Becoming Myself.
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My late husband Brian Barraclough (1933-2025), on whose behalf I have compiled this book list, had a great interest in medical history. He carried out research on many distinguished doctors from the 19th and 20th centuries, and prepared talks and publications about their lives. Brian came from New Zealand, had a long career in academic and clinical psychiatry in the UK, and returned to New Zealand after he retired. The two of us often worked together on our respective writing projects, and I edited and published the text of his autobiography after he died.
A long, complex, fascinating, and deeply personal book.
Jung (1875-1961), who departed from Freudian theory to develop the therapeutic system of Analytical Psychology, was a mystic who wrote more about his own complex inner life than outside events, discussing psychospiritual concepts such as mythology, the collective unconscious, and the archetypes.
He experienced visions, including a vivid near-death experience. Many of his beliefs resonate with the more modern “New Age” movement.
'I can understand myself only in the light of inner happenings. It is these that make up the singularity of my life, and with these my autobiography deals' Carl Jung
An eye-opening biography of one of the most influential psychiatrists of the modern age, drawing from his lectures, conversations, and own writings.
In the spring of 1957, when he was eighty-one years old, Carl Gustav Jung undertook the telling of his life story. Memories, Dreams, Reflections is that book, composed of conversations with his colleague and friend Aniela Jaffe, as well as chapters written in his own hand, and other…
Memory's Eyes: A New York Oedipus Novel
by
Cordelia Schmidt-Hellerau,
Memory's Eyes is a contemporary New York Oedipus novel. It is written for readers who enjoy playing with concepts and storylines, here namely the classical Oedipus myth, Sophocles' three Theban plays, the psychoanalytic concept of the Oedipus complex, and its pop-cultural adaptations in movies, cartoons, and jokes.
My late husband Brian Barraclough (1933-2025), on whose behalf I have compiled this book list, had a great interest in medical history. He carried out research on many distinguished doctors from the 19th and 20th centuries, and prepared talks and publications about their lives. Brian came from New Zealand, had a long career in academic and clinical psychiatry in the UK, and returned to New Zealand after he retired. The two of us often worked together on our respective writing projects, and I edited and published the text of his autobiography after he died.
My list would not be complete without this impressively long and detailed biography of Freud (1856–1939), the “father of psychoanalysis.”
Freud is the most famous psychiatrist who ever lived and is still a household name, even though his theories and methods of therapy have only a limited place in psychiatric practice today.
This book would be essential reading for serious scholars of psychiatric history, but I admit I couldn’t get through all of it myself, and I know that Brian couldn’t either.
An analytical biography of the precursor of psychoanalysis and famous neurologist, which reveals his childhood, courtship and marriage, career, ill health and death from cancer. Bibliogs
My late husband Brian Barraclough (1933-2025), on whose behalf I have compiled this book list, had a great interest in medical history. He carried out research on many distinguished doctors from the 19th and 20th centuries, and prepared talks and publications about their lives. Brian came from New Zealand, had a long career in academic and clinical psychiatry in the UK, and returned to New Zealand after he retired. The two of us often worked together on our respective writing projects, and I edited and published the text of his autobiography after he died.
Brian and I once met Anthony Clare (1942-2097), who was a multitalented, charismatic, and controversial Irish doctor.
Well known for interviewing many famous people in his BBC Radio 4 program In The Psychiatrist’s Chair, and for his book Psychiatry In Dissent, he was also a prominent clinician, researcher, administrator, political activist, and the father of seven children. He died suddenly from a heart attack at age 64.
This is a readable, factual account of his life and career.
Born in Dublin in 1942, Anthony Clare was the best-known psychiatrist of his generation. His BBC Radio 4 show, In the Psychiatrist’s Chair, which ran from 1982 to 2001, brought him international fame and changed the nature of broadcast interviews forever. Famous interviewees included Stephen Fry, Anthony Hopkins, Spike Milligan, Maya Angelou, and Jimmy Saville, each of whom yielded to Clare’s inimitable gentle yet probing style. Clare made unique contributions to the demystification and practice of psychiatry, most notably through his classic book Psychiatry in Dissent: Controversial Issues in Thought and Practice (1976). This book, the first, official biography of…
Memory's Eyes: A New York Oedipus Novel
by
Cordelia Schmidt-Hellerau,
Memory's Eyes is a contemporary New York Oedipus novel. It is written for readers who enjoy playing with concepts and storylines, here namely the classical Oedipus myth, Sophocles' three Theban plays, the psychoanalytic concept of the Oedipus complex, and its pop-cultural adaptations in movies, cartoons, and jokes.
My late husband Brian Barraclough (1933-2025), on whose behalf I have compiled this book list, had a great interest in medical history. He carried out research on many distinguished doctors from the 19th and 20th centuries, and prepared talks and publications about their lives. Brian came from New Zealand, had a long career in academic and clinical psychiatry in the UK, and returned to New Zealand after he retired. The two of us often worked together on our respective writing projects, and I edited and published the text of his autobiography after he died.
This well-known autobiography is told as a collection of vignettes.
Munthe (1857-1949) was a multitalented and cosmopolitan man, a physician, psychiatrist, and animal lover. He lived in Sweden, France, Italy, and England, and built the villa on Capri, which gives the book its title.
He writes in a humorous style which comes over as rather outdated, but also addresses some serious topics, including meditations on death.
This 'dream-laden and spooked' (Marina Warner, London Review of Books) story is to many one of the best-loved books of the twentieth century.
Munthe spent many years working as a doctor in Southern Italy, labouring unstintingly during typhus, cholera and earthquake disasters. It was during this period that he came across the ruined Tiberian villa of San Michele, perched high above the glittering Bay of Naples on Capri. With the help of Mastro Nicola and his three sons, and with only a charcoal sketch roughly drawn on a garden wall to guide them, Munthe devoted himself to rebuilding the house…
I am a psychotherapist, with a private practice, and the author of several books. Like me, Yalom is a psychotherapist as well as an author, and the best of his writing takes place in that heightened zone where emotions seem to crackle because two people are sustaining an authentic contact, actually being “there” with one another – like the very best, life-changing moments in psychotherapy. I dreamt last night about Irvin Yalom. So yeah, Yalom can get into your head, in a good way.
An absolutely gorgeous autobiography that never for a moment bogs down in the details, but soars above the timeline of Yalom's life by concerning itself chiefly with glimmers of insight, events that have lived on in his unconscious and formed him into the healer he became. Like all of Yalom's best work, I found myself reading it slowly, savoring every word. The honesty, if you open yourself to it, and accept that he really is telling you the honest to god truth, smacks you in the face like few authors I've ever encountered. I kept thinking, if I do enough psychotherapy for long enough, I might be able to pull off this degree of self-knowledge.
'When Yalom publishes something - anything - I buy it, and he never disappoints. He's an amazing storyteller, a gorgeous writer, a great, generous, compassionate thinker, and - quite rightly - one of the world's most influential mental healthcare practitioners' Nicola Barker, Guardian Best Books of 2017
'Wonderful, compelling and as insightful about its subject and about the times he lived in as you could hope for. A fabulous read' Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone
Irvin D. Yalom has made a career of investigating the lives of others. In Becoming Myself, his long-awaited memoir, he turns his therapeutic…
I was fortunate enough to meet my husband over 17 years ago, and we have packed a lot of life in since then. Along with two kids and a dog, we’ve had our fair share of tough moments: financial challenges, bereavement, family issues, marital disagreement, and traumatic life events that taught me just as much as my two decades-long career as a relationship psychotherapist has. This, combined with working with individuals, couples, and partners in search of what love means and how to practically go about achieving it, has clarified for me just how much we all need tools and teachings when it comes to matters of the heart.
I devoured this book and its main premise: that to be a therapist is a great art and a deep discipline. Yalom is the inspiration for many psychology and psychotherapy students and trainees, and for good reason. He is the kindly, wise father many of us wish we had.
I adored this book for its insights into psychotherapy and the therapy room and for the tenderness with which Yalom treats his patients. He was also one of the first professionals to openly and publicly share his own emotions and thoughts about his patients and being a therapist. He powerfully puts forward the ‘human first, therapist second’ philosophy, one that informed my work fundamentally. He takes chances, loves his patients sincerely, and, as a result, was a hugely respected clinician who taught as well as he practiced. It is a great read for patients and therapists alike.
The collection of ten absorbing tales by master psychotherapist Irvin D. Yalom uncovers the mysteries, frustrations, pathos, and humour 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.
I am the principal of Guttman Development Strategies (GDS), an organization development firm that works with senior executives and their teams in major corporations globally to build horizontal, high-performance teams, provide leadership coaching, and develop leadership skills. I am a speaker and author of three acclaimed management books and dozens of articles in business publications.
We all make ourselves. How well we do it is our choice!
This book has had a profound impact on my approach to executive coaching and organizational change, where a key difficulty that compromises performance centers on self-limiting and misguided beliefs. Drs. Ellis and Harper focus on self-management techniques that shift the focus from “them” to “you.” We can change negative emotions and behaviors that stem from our own thinking. It’s our choice as to what we think and emote.
This book, based on clinical research, provides readers with insights and techniques to permanently shift their game.
Direct, get-to-the-heart-of-the-problem methods to teach you what you do to needless upset yourself and make yourself emotionally stronger by the creators of the most popular forms of therapy in the world.
From the foreword by publisher Melvin Powers: Years ago, after two decades of burning the midnight oil, reading manuscripts which professed to have all the virtues this one actually possesses, I found the original New Guide to Rational Living—a gem that has become a classic in the field of psychology.
Since then, I am delighted to say, I have sold 1.5 million copies of this book in previous editions.…
From a young age, I was captivated by art, music, film, and literature—constantly craving more from these creative mediums. Growing up in a lower-income, working-class home, I was surrounded by blue-collar workers, many of whom couldn’t attend college due to financial limitations. I learned early on that the richest education comes not just from books but from the stories of others and the world around us. Always feeling I had my own story to tell, I transitioned from steel worker to talent agent in Hollywood. But despite my success promoting others, something was missing—my own narrative. After a tragic loss, I reevaluated my path and chose to become a psychotherapist and author.
I absolutely love this book. As a psychotherapist (and author) myself, I felt like the main character's journey mirrored my own. Like Hector, I found myself questioning whether I was truly happy and even whether my patients were happy. This book inspired me to spend a year researching happiness, only to realize that the real key wasn’t happiness—it was meaning.
In fact, this book should be called Hector and the Search for Meaning! It was the catalyst for my own journey to write my book.
Can we learn how to be happy? Hector is a successful young psychiatrist. He's very good at treating patients in real need of his help. But many people he sees have no health problems: they're just deeply dissatisfied with their lives. Hector can't do much for them, and it's beginning to depress him. So when a patient tells him he looks in need of a holiday, Hector decides to set off round the world to find out what makes people everywhere happy (and sad), and whether there is such a thing as the secret of true happiness.
I’m a Brighton based writer. I’ve lived with bloody depression and frigging anxiety, since a child. I’m the founder of The Recovery Letters project, which publishes online letters from people recovering from depression, addressed to those experiencing it. It was published as a book in 2017 and Cosmopolitan named it "One of the 12 mental health books everyone should read". I also edited What I Do to Get Through: How to Run, Swim, Cycle, Sew, or Sing Your Way Through Depression. My fourth book, How to Tell Anxiety to Sod Off, is due out in 2022.
This book is a beautiful, inspiring weaving tale of a psychiatrist who has recurrent depression and has worked with people with depression. She doesn’t disguise how hard depression is, she doesn’t patronise, she explains depression from her personal point of view, explores what happened in her childhood, and explains a clinician’s point of view of depression.
It’s embedded with bucket loads of empathy, compassion, and hope. You hear about the patients she’s helped and you come out feeling humbled and grateful for her telling her story. Very useful for professionals working in psychiatry and mental health but equally useful for those of us with this terrible illness.
'If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.'
George Eliot, Middlemarch
Having spent her life trying to patch up the souls of others, psychiatrist Linda Gask came to realise that being an expert in depression didn't confer any immunity from it - she had to learn take care of herself, too. Artfully crafted and told with warmth and honesty, this is the story of Linda's journey, interwoven…
I’m a Brighton based writer. I’ve lived with bloody depression and frigging anxiety, since a child. I’m the founder of The Recovery Letters project, which publishes online letters from people recovering from depression, addressed to those experiencing it. It was published as a book in 2017 and Cosmopolitan named it "One of the 12 mental health books everyone should read". I also edited What I Do to Get Through: How to Run, Swim, Cycle, Sew, or Sing Your Way Through Depression. My fourth book, How to Tell Anxiety to Sod Off, is due out in 2022.
This book saved my life. And no, I’m not exaggerating. I read it at the peak of my depression when I’d lost all hope and my emotional pain was at its peak. I spent the whole time going ‘Yes! That’s me, that’s happening to me! Thank god someone understands’.
It is short, so that you can actually finish it. This is SO important when your concentration has evaporated due to depression. It’s written by a psychiatrist who understands what your brain is doing but also, crucially, tells you what to do and emphasises how serious this illness is.
'People affected by depression tell me this is the most powerful and helpful book ever written on the topic. I keep meeting people who say this book changed their lives.' - Jeremy Vine, BBC Radio 2
Do you have depression? Firstly, stop blaming yourself. Secondly, don't struggle on alone - read this book instead. It has helped thousands of people just like you.
Dr Tim Cantopher knows two essential truths about depression and depressive illness.
One: it's strong people who are most vulnerable to it; people whose standards are high, whose ethics are powerful, who want their lives to be…
