Irvin D. Yalom

Irvin D. Yalom is an American existential psychiatrist and emeritus professor of psychiatry at Stanford University. Born in Washington, D.C. in 1931 to Jewish parents who had emigrated from Belarus, he trained in medicine at Boston University and joined the Stanford faculty in 1963, where he became known for teaching group psychotherapy and for developing a model of existential psychotherapy built around four givens of the human condition: isolation, meaninglessness, mortality and freedom. His textbook The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy, first published in 1970, is a standard training text, and he has also written novels and case-based fiction such as When Nietzsche Wept. He co-directs an institute that works to advance his approach to psychotherapy.