The Thief of Happiness
The Story of an Extraordinary Psychotherapy
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Boston: Beacon Press
Insightful, ecstatic, and achingly honest, The Thief of Happiness is the story of one woman’s seven-year stint in psychotherapy. Bonnie Friedman’s journey begins with writer’s block—which almost magically cured—culminates in an extraordinary portrayal of the sharp paradox at the heart of the therapeutic relationship. The Thief of Happiness is a stunning exploration of the peculiar and passionate attachments that often develop between patient and therapist, and a profound portrait of how personal change actually happens.
Insightful, ecstatic, and achingly honest, The Thief of Happiness is the story of one woman’s seven-year stint in psychotherapy. Bonnie Friedman’s journey begins with writer’s block—which almost magically cured—culminates in an extraordinary portrayal of the sharp paradox at the heart of the therapeutic relationship. The Thief of Happiness is a stunning exploration of the peculiar and passionate attachments that often develop between patient and therapist, and a profound portrait of how personal change actually happens.
This is a bracing, beautiful book in which the narrator peels back layer after layer of her own soul to reveal how hurt and healing happens.
– Lauren Slater, author of Prozac Diary and Opening Skinner’s Box.
Compulsively readable . . . . At once unsettling, voyeuristic, instructive, and cautionary.
—Francine Prose, O: The Oprah Magazine
[E]xcellent in the way H.D."s [Tribute to Freud] is: it illuminates the intricate, murky relationship between therapy and real life. . . . Friedman is at her best when relaying the delicately nuanced exchanges that occur between the
patient and therapist. . . . The book could, like Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, develop a cult following.
—Publishers Weekly
[S]trangely profound. . . . [an author] with a great eye for detail.
—Joshua Wolf Shenk, The Washington Post
Eloquent. – Library Journal
– Lauren Slater, author of Prozac Diary and Opening Skinner’s Box.
Compulsively readable . . . . At once unsettling, voyeuristic, instructive, and cautionary.
—Francine Prose, O: The Oprah Magazine
[E]xcellent in the way H.D."s [Tribute to Freud] is: it illuminates the intricate, murky relationship between therapy and real life. . . . Friedman is at her best when relaying the delicately nuanced exchanges that occur between the
patient and therapist. . . . The book could, like Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, develop a cult following.
—Publishers Weekly
[S]trangely profound. . . . [an author] with a great eye for detail.
—Joshua Wolf Shenk, The Washington Post
Eloquent. – Library Journal