How long does it take to read Tales from a Traveling Couch?
Robert U. Akeret
Tales from a Traveling Couch by Robert U. Akeret takes about 4 hours 24 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 4 hours 24 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1995. 240 pages, about 66,000 words.
9 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 7 hours 20 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 4 hours 24 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 2 hours 45 minutes |
The page count is the median across 5 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
After thirty-five years in practice, prominent New York psychotherapist and author Robert Akeret found himself in the thrall of a single question: Did therapy make a real difference in his patients' lives? So on a sunny morning in April Dr. Akeret got into his van and set off to visit his most memorable former patients - a journey "in search of story endings." And what remarkable stories they are:. Naomi, an abused young Jewish girl from the Bronx who transforms herself into a Spanish flamenco dancer named Isabella. Was this a symptom of multiple personality disorder? Or was Naomi's "new self" a lifesaving personality adaptation? "Who" was she now, in her mid-fifties? What about Charles, the animal trainer who fell madly in love with a circus polar bear? Had he been able to resist his fatal psychosexual attraction? What became of Seth, a man obsessed with sadomasochistic fantasies yet drawn to the love-in culture of the sixties? Which side of him had won? What of Sasha, the dashing prize-winning French novelist with writer's block and a penchant for exploiting women? In the end did his art prevail, or his life? And what became of Mary? Did she ever "murder" again? Like a brilliant psychological detective novel, this book tells these stories in fascinating detail while raising fundamental questions about psychotherapy. Does it work? Does it last? Are these questions even answerable? Returning home with his "story endings," Dr. Akeret finds that his journey has reshaped his ideas of what it means to have a rich and satisfying life.
Subjects: Case studies, Psychotherapy patients, Psychotherapy, Evaluation, Longitudinal studies, Psychotherapists
