The Act of Living

Tallis writes with clarity and witTallis has distilled a wide range of psychological writing without oversimplifying the insights or reducing them to self-help platitudes … Tallis is an engaging writer and this is at heart a highly readable, often touching history of the talking cures and some of their most brilliant exponents – Sebastian Faulks * Sunday Times *Psychology has its rogues and charlatans but this history reminds you it is a force for good … his writing is brisk and clear, his narrative is both thematic and roughly chronological, which is no easy feat of organisation, and studded with heavily disguised case histories – David Aaronovitch * The Times *Few psychotherapists write with the clarity of Tallis … He also peppers the book with delightful nuggets from the psychological world … a gifted storyteller * The Tablet *An engaging and expansive tour of our modern-day therapeutic landscape * Times Literary Supplement *

Dr Frank Tallis is a writer and clinical psychologist. His non-fiction books include The Incurable Romantic, The Act of Living, and Mortal Secrets: Freud, Vienna and The Discovery of the Modern Mind, which was a book of the year in The Times. In the TLS, William Boyd said ‘Tallis’ clear-eyed judicious analysis is the best I’ve read’. Tallis is also the author of the Liebermann Papers, a psychoanalytic detective series set in Freud’s Vienna and adapted for television as the BBC drama Vienna Blood. He lives in London.

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