A Therapeutic Journey: Lessons from the School of Life

Alain de Botton's redemptive volume charts a course from collapse to recovery with kindness, compassion and wisdom. “Alain de Botton, one of our era’s most uncommonly perceptive, lyrical, and lucid existential contemplatives.” — The Marginalian A Therapeutic Journey follows the arc from mental crisis and collapse, to convalescence and recovery. Written with kindness, knowledge and sympathy, it is both a practical guide and a source of consolation and companionship in what might be some of our loneliest, most anguished moments. In this blueprint for enduring a period of mental anguish, Alain de Botton explores how we can cope with a variety of forms of mental pain and illness, from the mild to the severe. It considers how and why we might become ill; how we can explain things to friends, family and colleagues; how we can find our ways towards recovery; and how we can build resilience, so as to live wisely alongside our difficulties. At heart this is a book about redemption—about regaining the thread of our lives, rediscovering meaning, and finding our way back to connection, warmth and joy. An invaluable literary companion through the loneliness of mental illness.