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    The Good Psychologist: A Novel
    The Good Psychologist: A Novel
    The Good Psychologist: A Novel
    Audiobook7 hours

    The Good Psychologist: A Novel

    Written by Noam Shpancer

    Narrated by William Dufris

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Noam Shpancer's stunning debut novel opens as a psychologist reluctantly takes on a new client-an exotic dancer whose severe anxiety is keeping her from the stage. The psychologist, a solitary professional who also teaches a lively night class, helps the client confront her fears. But as treatment unfolds, her struggles and secrets begin to radiate onto his life, upsetting the precarious balance in his unresolved relationship with Nina, a married former colleague with whom he has a child-a child he has never met. As the shell of his detachment begins to crack, he suddenly finds himself too deeply involved, the boundary lines between professional and personal, between help and harm, blurring dangerously.

    With its wonderfully distinctive narrative voice, rich with humor and humanity, The Good Psychologist leads the listener on a journey into the heart of the therapy process and beyond, examining some of the fundamental questions of the soul: to move or be still; to defy or obey; to let go or hold on.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateAug 17, 2010
    ISBN9781400189274

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    Reviews for The Good Psychologist

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    • 1/5
      ReviewNoam ShpancerThe Good PsychologistHenry Holt and CompanyAugust 2010$22.95, cloth, 238 pages. Most creative writing teachers will tell you to “Write about what you know, “ and one certainly can’t fault Noam Shpancer for ignoring that much traveled and generally useful advice. A practicing psychologist writing a novel with a practicing psychologist as a protagonist would seem to be the very essence of writing about what you know. However, the corollary to that sage piece of advice should probably be, “but make sure you have a story to tell, first.” And that’s the problem with Mr. Shpancer‘s debut novel, The Good Psychologist - there just isn’t enough story there. In fact, in therapy-speak, Mr. Shpancer seems to be over-identified with his “knower,” the self that seeks approval for being the bearer of information. Too much information in this case as, in alternating chapters, we get far more than we need of Mr. Shpancer, in the guise of his main character (and really the only clearly defined character in the book) telling us, and a roomful of students from central casting, what makes a good psychologist. His personal failings, when they are at looooong last revealed, seem tame and unremarkable and the irony they are meant to suggest, of the flawed human versus the confident professional, is weak and unconvincing. Still, Mr. Shpancer maintains a brisk pace and one stays with the novel in the hope that something will happen. Alas, not much does.
    • 4/5
      Wow! What an excellent book. I enjoyed this book very much. The Good Psychologist started a bit slow for me but maybe that was because I wasn't really paying attention at first. I quickly became engrossed in all of it! I felt like I was having my own therapy sessions. I want to take the class! I loved the way the different personalities of each character were portrayed. From the students in the class to the patients and even the psychologist himself. This story will stay with me for a while.
    • 4/5
      Skilled not only in his unusual approach in narration, Noam Shpancer is also quantifiably knowledgeable as a clinical psychologist and a psychology professor.In his masterful debut novel, he displays the intricacies of successful clinical psychological intervention and professorial academic allocution while offering a glimpse of the inner turmoil of the solitary protagonist’s daily life.If such an unexpected premise is not sufficient to draw immediate attention, the guileless reader also senses a subliminal awareness of being an unsuspecting client of our nameless psychologist.“But in every situation, the good psychologist always attends to movement, to the wind in the sails; always seeks, like a surfer, to catch the good wave and exploit its momentum. The sole purpose of every thought, every utterance, every gesture you produce in the therapy space is to advance the client’s agenda: to listen to the client, to understand the client, to allow a protected space for his explorations, to share with him your knowledge of the inner architecture, to train him in the proper use of the psychological tools. All the materials of the therapeutic encounter, all its expressions and gestures exist for one legitimate purpose: discerning their role in the process of the client’s healing.” (Pages 115-116)One literary Rubik cube will not suffice, Dr. Shpancer.
    • 4/5
      The good psychologist transitions in this novel between his therapy office, a night class he teaches and his own life relationship. I was immediately taken with his client, a young exotic dancer that is suddenly taken with anxiety over what she is doing and how her life is going. Equally mesmerizing is the good psychologists teaching in his night class where again he encounters some interesting characters. Probably the most surprising is his own personal life that gradually we become aware of. I really liked the easy way this story unfolds and how all things prove to come together to show us about our own life.
    • 4/5
      This is a thoughtful novel about a psychologist, mixing his personal, professional, and academic life. The ideas encountered in the therapy room mirror the lessons taught in the classroom and the experiences felt in his personal life. The novel was well written and insightful about human motivation and behavior. The writing style did not use quotation marks, which was rarely confusing, but in a way enhanced the tone with which the author spoke. The novel took on a quality that makes the reader feel as though they are reading a dream or an experience or a thought life rather than a script or a dialogue. I enjoyed the book; it got me to think and relate to the character on a human level.
    • 4/5
      Noam Shpancer's debut novel offers an insightful look at the life of a clinical psychologist who splits his days between his private practice and teaching semi-interested college students. His latest client presents with a case of anxiety which is preventing her from continuing her career as an exotic dancer, or stripper.Through the course of the story, the never named psychologist works to get his client to understand the root of her anxiety while he himself engages in an unhealthy relationship with a married woman who remains devoted to her sickly husband. The tensions between the psychologist and his paramour and between his client's mob-connected boss and himself provide the narrative thrust that allows us to explore the world of clinical psychology. The scenes with the college students serve as a juxtaposition for it is in the safe confines of an educational setting where the psychologist shines. Whatever doubts he harbors about the moral appropriateness of returning his client to the stage and pole are obliterated by the confidence he displays when engaging his students to think beyond themselves.My wife recently completed her master's degree in clinical social work and also read this book; she commented that the psychologists constant reminder to remove one's self-perspective was accurate as it reminded her of the dangers inherent in counter-transference.The linguistic style may be off-putting to those not familiar with or not interested in the clinical setting. It can be dry at times and is very detached. This very detachment, so necessary in the clinical setting, may be hindering the psychologist in her personal life.Overall, a good read, though not as in-depth as I would have liked. At times it reads like case-study vignettes, which may not be everyone's cup of tea.
    • 5/5
      I found this book to be a real page turner. It's written from the perspecitve of a psychologist and his expiences in his practice, as a professor, and delves into his private life. I found the book quite intruiging seeing things from the oppositie point of view than the usual. It's not my normal/typical genre' so I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it.
    • 4/5
      This is the story of a psychologist, whose name we never learn. He teaches night classes at a university and sees clients during the day. Of his clients, we learn the most about Tiffany, a stripper who has fear of returning onstage and would like to be reunited with her daughter.I learned a lot from this book. I liked how psychological theory was woven seamlessly into the narrative. My only complaint was how the psychologist remained detached from almost everyone and formed no enduring ties.
    • 4/5
      Bottom line first: This one is definitely worth finding and reading. The story is told from the point of view of the psychologist (we never learn his name) and begins as he agrees to take on a new patient- a young girl who is experiencing anxiety attacks and can no longer work. She is an exotic dancer, and can't perform.As the book progresses, Shpancer moves us effortlessly between therapy sessions with the patient, and the psychologists' evening classes at the local college, where he is teaching Introduction to the Principles of Therapy. We learn much about the subject, much about the psychologist, and enough about several of his students to give us a rounded picture of how to treat anxiety, and what can cause it. As the class learns various techniques to treat patients, the psychologist is carefully guiding his patient through a minefield of issues, drawing her out, giving her homework, and ultimately helping her confront and overcome her fears. Over all of this, the author weaves a poignant story of the psychologist's personal relationship with Nina, a former colleague (and mother of his child) who is married to someone else. It's difficult to say more without spoiling a wonderful story for the reader.Shpancer himself is a practicing clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at Otterbein College in Ohio. One wonders if the story is at all autobiographical. It certainly is clinical, sharply focused, and at the same time, easily understood by the novice who has no knowledge of the subject. His writing is clear and compelling, empathetic and clinical at the same time. A short, page-turning, well-done debut. Let's hope for more.
    • 4/5
      I really liked this book. A psychologist who specializes in anxiety begins seeing a stripper who all of a sudden has acquired stage fright. As you follow the psychologist between his sessions with the stripper, the night class he teaches, and his own complicated life, you get to see his philosophies on human emotion. As a psychotherapist myself, I really loved all the psychobabble and in-depth psychological explanation -- I'm not sure a layperson would find it all that interesting, though.And then there's the matter of the really unsatisfying ending. I don't insist on books being all tied up and finished with a pretty bow -- but I also don't like to be left holding all the loose ends. All in all, I enjoyed it though -- I'll be watching for more from Noam Shpancer.
    • 3/5
      Good premise, not great execution. He had an affair with a married colleague who decided to have a baby with him and raise it with her husband, and so then left our hero. Now he has a difficult patient in therapy and gets advice from his former lover, but then intrudes on her life, and then intrudes on his patient's life, but nothing much happened in either case. Very inappropriate therapeutic behavior, watching his patient strip and dance suggestively in front of him, and very cringe-making description of same.The structure of the book, with lectures from his psychotherapy class interspersed, is again a good idea but poorly executed - the lectures were dry and rather elementary.
    • 4/5
      Wonderful line-by-line writing! Lovely images, and a very delicate hand at description. Characters that make an impression on your readerly senses.But not a novel, really. More like the internalized effects of living a life in the psychologist's seat made into an essay. Not so much acted out as acted. The unnamed psychologist, a damned decent man, can be summed up in one clean metaphor: He finds a broken-down old piano, hauls it home, and gets a professional piano-tuner to come and fix its battered old carcass up. The tuner, being a responsible sort, says the Good Psychologist could go get a new piano for less than it'll cost to bring the old one back to life. The psychologist thanks him, and orders the remake to proceed. It does. Beautiful music ensues.Well, that's it, really. Not that this is in any way a bad book, but it would HUGELY irritate me to pay twenty-four United States dollars for it. Twelve, yes. MAYbe fourteen. Over twenty? Oh HELL no.First novels, such as this is, published initially in harcover are a bad idea, in this climate of frugality and underemployment. Take heed, publishers, and move to a trade paper format. How interested are you in the inner life of a shrink? If very, buy the book. If mildly, don't.