The Good Story

Exchanges on Truth, Fiction and Psychotherapy

De: Arabella Kurtz, J. M. Coetzee

Narrado por: Jeff Cummings, Sandra Burr

A fascinating dialogue on the human desire to make up stories between Nobel Prize-winning author J. M. Coetzee and psychotherapist Arabella Kurtz

The Good Story is an exchange between a writer with a long-standing interest in moral psychology and a psychotherapist with training in literary studies. Coetzee and Kurtz consider psychotherapy and its wider social context from different perspectives, but at the heart of both their approaches is a fascination with narrative. Working alone, the writer is in control of the story he or she tells. The therapist, on the other hand, collaborates with the patient in telling the story that might reveal the "truth."

The authors discuss both individual psychology and the psychology of the group: the school classroom, the gang, the settler nation in which the brutal deeds of the ancestors must be accommodated into a national story. In a meeting of the minds that is illuminating, surprising, and thought provoking, Coetzee and Kurtz explore the human capacity for self-examination - our attempts to understand our own individual life stories as well as our part in the larger story through language.

©2015 J. M. Coetzee; 2015 Arabella Kurtz (P)2015 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.

Probably most interesting to psychotherapists who aspire to write fiction.

A compelling, in depth, analysis of the relationship between therapy & writing fiction. Enough to make your head spin, but often wondrously so.
But, though the male voice is decent enough, the female reader is rather awful, that is, stilted, robotic, faltering often in pace, sounding like a computerized voice ... a lot. If I was the therapist (and I am one), I would be embarrassed to have my work translated in this manner. I was surprised to see it get accepted for an audio book. If I hadn't been so interested in the topic, I would have bailed after the first exchange.
Lastly, as an aspiring novelist too, Mr. Coetzee was immensely inspiring!

far too intellectual for me

it was interesting at first but I had trouble following sometimes and had to go back. definitely not a good listen for when you're on the bus or subway surrounded by distractions