1) Intimate Journeys: Stories from Life-Changing Therapy, by James Bugental.
I finished this book recently and found a lot to like in this humanistic psychologist's account of therapy with 5 of his clients. His descriptions of the therapy sessions are interspersed with his own thoughts on their therapy and his own life. This is a therapist who definitely spends a helluva lot of time outside of session thinking about his clients. The book was written in the 70s but these therapy sessions were from the sixties and it shows. The book is a little dated in this regard, as things in the sixties were a lot different from now. These 5 clients also move into group therapy with each other, and those descriptions illustrated really well to me the potential value of group. Near the end of the book, the therapist moves to another city and is able to terminate successfully with 4 of the 5 clients, as they were towards the end anyway. But one of them is still in the middle of her therapy and the termination was very traumatic for her, almost sent her over the edge. As a client myself, termination is always lurking in the back of my mind, and it was somehow "useful" for me to read 5 accounts of this. A part of the book that really shines through is that you can see how a therapist and his life are themselves changed and affected by therapy with his clients. It's not all a one way street even though we sometimes think it is because we are paying for their services and the relationship is "professional."