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 MarginalianA 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.