Irvin Yalom's Experiment Revisited: Applying Robert Langs's Listening Process to a Psychotherapy Classic

Abstract

In a case now famous for its unconventionality, Irvin Yalom had his financially strapped patient submit written reports of the experience of her therapy sessions rather than pay a monetary fee. He also wrote reports of each session, and the two of them shared royalties from the book, Every Day Gets a Little Closer, eventually produced. The arrangement yielded enough process detail to warrant examination through Robert Langs's method of listening and formulating. From that perspective, it seems Yalom did not understand the encoded messages from his patient in reaction to the frame deviations, which resulted in a deterioration of the communicative field and treatment alliance. Yalom did help his patient to become more appropriately assertive, but her inner fragmentation was untouched.