I hate memoirs, yet I’ve enjoyed every memoir that I’ve ever read. There’s something jarring about someone having the audacity to think their life is interesting enough for other people to read about it. This book was not an exception to the rule. I absolutely loved it and would highly recommend it. It was hilariously funny, there were riotous plot twists and it was impressive how educational it was.

This book is the story of Dr Cawley’s journey to being a psychotherapist. She provides case vignettes from the therapist’s perspective, neatly explaining ways of formulating and understanding human behaviour. I’d recommend it to anyone wanting to get to grips with a range of ways of understanding and working with people from a psychological perspective. It’s accessible, and would be great for core psychiatry resident doctors, but I also loved it as a psychotherapy consultant. She shows how much knowledge, skill, technique and craft goes into psychotherapy sessions, and how much can be learned and honed through hours of practice, supervision and education.

Dr Cawley also talks about herself as someone going through the process, and her experiences of supervision, personal therapy and life.

One thing that Dr Cawley really gets is that in order to be a therapist, you need to know yourself and you need to be relatable. You don’t need to be a machine. She brings in her own personal chaos to the story and brilliantly illustrates how necessary our humanity is. The last chapter was ominously called ‘the missing piece of the puzzle’ and as I moved towards this chapter I was dreading her finding a boring and sane ‘happily ever after’. Thankfully, she did not let me down and the final section involves one of the most unhinged displays of presenteeism I have come across. It’s marvellous.

The problem with any form of training in psychotherapy is that you will never be good at it in the beginning. And as you start to get better at it, you have a whole raft of truly embarrassing and awkward memories as you remember your botched attempts to try to reach and connect with the other. You’re also acutely aware that these experiences have been shared with your patients, therapist and supervisor. Horrendous. But happily, as Dr Cawley illustrates, our most shameful, blush-inducing stories can make the most hilarious anecdotes a few years down the line. Dr Cawley’s story about her encounter with a consultant and canteen floor was sheer perfection.

I’d recommend for anyone with a sense of humour and an interest in psychological thinking and anyone who ever wondered if they were sane enough to do the job.