Resurfacing After Exams and Ready To Get Reading

After finishing all of my AS exams and completing year 12 I have now got my whole summer to read about and gain an extra insight into Psychology. My first book is titled "Love's Executioner and other tales of Psychotherapy" in which therapist Irvin Yalom gives detailed accounts of previous patients and his work with them. From the onset I was fascinated by Yalom's theory of "an ever-present conflict between the wish to continue to exist and the awareness of inevitable death" and how one, as a child growing up, devises ways to escape or deny the inevitability of death as I could apply this to my own experiences growing up. 1) The very young are given religion and reassurance from parents to deny death. 2) As we get older we transform death into an entity or a monster waiting under one's bed so we feel able to elude death and hide from it. 3) Growing older yet again we attempt to detoxify death by challenging it through the use of daredevilry or desensitise ourselves through to use of horror films and giggling with friends. Personally this mirrors my own life so far which allows me to really consider and appreciate many of Yalom's ideas having never given attention to this behaviour before. A challenging and extremely enthralling read so far- updates shortly!