Maybe You Should Talk To Someone

 By Lori Gottlieb

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt     2019

415 pages     Memoir

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is an eminently readable look at the life of a psychologist. Lori Gottlieb is a journalist as well as a psychologist. Consequently, she has very skillfully integrated her own story with narratives about her relationship with her therapist as well as her relationships with several of her patients. The book is part memoir, part non-fiction psychology lesson, and part instruction on how to conduct therapy.

She begins with the story of the breakup with her boyfriend, who remains nameless. He has decided that he doesn’t want to parent another child, and Lori has a pre-adolescent son. They were on the verge of being married when he springs this decision on her. She asks what caused him to wait so long to broach the topic. He says “it never felt like the right time to bring it up.” She goes on to say, “When my therapist friends hear this part of the story, they immediately diagnose him as ‘avoidant.’ When my non-therapist friends hear it, they immediately diagnose him as ‘an asshole’.” Her shock and grief are so complete that she realizes that she needs to have some psychological therapy.

Gottlieb has an ingratiating writing style that leads us through her therapy with Wendall, thinking that he can help her through this crisis in her life. She soon learns that she is in therapy for more than just crisis management, but there is much more that she wants to learn through her sessions with Wendall. Some of the skills she witnesses while with Wendall can be carried over with her own patients. She finds herself growing both personally and professionally through her therapy. A quote from the journalist Alex Tizon becomes very appropriate as she grows. He believed that every person has an epic story that resides “somewhere in the tangle of the subject’s burden and the subject’s desire.”

To that end, Gottlieb tells the stories of several of her patients. She says that she has woven several cases together to tell the stories of a television executive, a woman turning 70 and fearing for the future, and a young woman facing death from cancer. Each of these stories is fascinating and revealing. I found myself reflecting on my own life situation as I read about their life situations, their therapy, and their futures. Each of these characters is eminently relatable and likeable. On the subject of likability, the reviewer in Slate has this to say.

“It is this exact question of likability that fascinatingly presents itself throughout the book, a meditation on the fact that we all consider ourselves to be the protagonists of our own stories, despite our flaws, a fact that must be abundantly apparent to our therapists. Early on, Gottlieb, struggling to remain patient with the television executive, reminds herself that “there’s something likeable in everyone,” a very therapist thing to say. But as we delve further into the process, she starts to unpack this idea of likability in greater depth, particularly in how it relates to herself—to her own self-perception as a patient and a person in the world. In doing so, Gottlieb simultaneously argues that likability matters much less than any of us think—“In therapy we aim for self-compassion (Am I human?) versus self-esteem (a judgement: Am I good or bad?)”—and acknowledges that we still all want to be liked just the same. Even Gottlieb asks her therapist, sheepishly, if he likes her. This smaller stuff may be clinically irrelevant, but it still matters.”

I was fascinated with Maybe You Should Talk to Someone on several levels. The book was extraordinarily interesting, and I found myself devouring chapter after chapter. My relationship with Gottlieb and her patients surprised me, and when the young patient dies, I cried, remembering my own grief experiences. In our book group discussion last evening, our friendships deepened as we each related our own stories, our own concerns, and our own therapy sessions. We ended the evening even more convinced that our friendships were deep and sincere, and the book group would remain the high point of our month—every month.

Lori Gottlieb’s website. On the website is a terrific Ted Talk about changing your life.