The Act of Living: What the Great ­Psychologists Can Teach Us About Surviving Discontent in an Age of Anxiety
FRANK TALLIS
(LITTLE, BROWN, 352 PP, £18.99)
Tablet bookshop price £17.09 • tel 020 7799 4064

Frank Tallis begins with a conundrum. Why is it that psychotherapists are not better-known? Many of us, he argues, could name five philosophers with relative ease. But how many could easily name figures like Fritz Perls, Wilhelm Reich, Donald Winnicott or Albert Ellis? Tallis describes such figures, alongside Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, as being “among the great ­psychotherapists of the last century” (though of course many of them were, in addition, ­doctors and psychiatrists).

One reason is antagonism between different schools of psychotherapy. The brand is fractured. A second reason is the charge of absurdity, which usually arises in the context of Freudian psychoanalysis. Freud’s theory of sexual development, with its focus on pre­cocious sexual feelings and incestuous urges, has had people outraged for years.

A third reason is that few psychotherapists write with the clarity of Tallis. Often their work is bogged down by jargon and opaque nomenclature. Herein lies the value of The Act of Living. It is a clear exposition of the numerous types of psychotherapy which exist today, making it the perfect introduction for any psychology student or budding therapist.