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 Marginalian

A Therapeutic Journey is a collection of essays about mental challenge and health. Written with kindness, knowledge and sympathy, it is a practical guide to well-being and a source of consolation and companionship in what might be some of our loneliest, most anguished moments.

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 happiness - about regaining the thread of our lives, rediscovering meaning, and finding our way back to connection, warmth and joy.