Dr. Irvin Yalom in Conversation with Dr. Nathan Szajnberg

Irvin D. Yalom has made a career of investigating the lives of others. In this profound memoir, he turns his writing and therapeutic eye on himself.

He opens his story with a nightmare: He is twelve, and riding his bike past the home of an acne-scarred girl. Like he does every morning, he calls out, hoping to befriend her, "Hello Measles!" But in his dream, the girl's father makes Yalom understand that his daily greeting had hurt her. For Yalom, this was the birth of empathy; he would not forget the lesson. As Becoming Myself unfolds, we see the birth of the insightful thinker whose books have been a beacon to so many. This is not simply a man's life story; Yalom's reflections on his life and development are an invitation for us to reflect on the origins of our own selves and the meanings of our lives.

Yalom is an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Stanford University and a psychiatrist in San Francisco. He is the author of many books, including Love's Executioner, The Gift of Therapy and When Nietzsche Wept.

This event will be moderated by Nathan Szajnberg, MD. Born in Germany and raised in the US, Szajnberg attended college and medical school at the University of Chicago.

He was the Freud Professor of Psychoanalysis at the Hebrew University and is the author of several books on development, as well as a recent novel, Jerusaland: An Insignificant Death.

Szajnberg is in private practice in Palo Alto.

This event was in partnership with Books Inc. Palo Alto.