Book Reviews

BOOK REVIEWS

I am not sure which camp you are in. Perhaps you are chomping at the bit to decomp for a summer holiday abroad, or else opting for the staycation option, or perhaps you have become so accustomed to the pleasure of the home and prefer to curl up on your comfortable sofa. Whatever your predilection, here is something to try for every taste.

Let's start with a challenge from Spinoza's Ethics, as translated by George Eliot. Challenging certainly but also enthralling according to its reviewer, who found his idea compatible with existential thought and useful to therapy. Before you think you prefer to avoid such a daunting work, note that Clare Carlisle, its editor, makes it accessible with her thorough introduction and copious notes. It is followed by a review of a selection of four papers/books by various editors – Bager-Charleston, McBeath, Goss and Stevens. The works all consider the area and importance of self-reflective research from the perspective of practitioners on their professional practice. The translation of the first volume of Martinez Robles's Existential Therapy inspired the reviewer who delighted in its clarity, breadth of topics and case studies, and the unique perspective of the Mexican existentialist school which is generally omitted from the curriculum of UK training institutions.

Severson's In the Wake of Trauma is helpful for working existentially with trauma as it takes a refreshing take on literature and arts.

Adams' Reflecting On the Inevitable is a useful book looking at my-death and other-death concepts and how to facilitate the conversations around them, important in this time of COVID.

The film Parasite is last, reviewed through the lens of the existential relationship of living with schizophrenia today, as well as on being a redundant human being, which needs to be reframed and re-educated.

Ondine Smulders