Existential Psychotherapy: Living with Death Anxiety

Yalom’s humanistic approach to psychotherapy interests us because of his use of Hemingway, among other writers, as a touchpoint in discussing the fictional truths that speak to character. Along with Yalom’s critique of Elisabeth Kübler Ross’s ideas of death and dying, the author presents a section on “Hemingway’s Death Anxiety,” in which he notes Yalom’s suggestion that Hemingway committed suicide because he feared death. The section takes a new look at the well-known article (1971) by Yalom and his wife, Marilyn Yalom, that analyzed Hemingway’s death through the lens of his fiction