Rethink the Couch

Get a gripping glimpse into the therapy room and most powerful boardrooms in Asia in this first ever self-help collection of essays by an expatriate therapist from New York City

In more than a decade as a psychotherapist to some of Asia’s most powerful couples and businesspeople, expat New Yorker Allison Heiliczer has seen it all.

Heiliczer brings readers into her therapy room and engagements with such clients: the Singaporean maneater with a portfolio comparing the endowments—physical and financial—of her expat lovers; the wealthy Chinese litigator in thrall to a feng shui master; the entrepreneur trying to treat his own ADHD; the Indonesian-Chinese businessman who faced a reckoning when his multiple unzipperings were exposed, and many others.

But, this is no exposé. Part East-meets-West expat journey, part self-help deliberation, this collection of personal narratives explores the influence cultural backgrounds have on work and relationships and sheds light on stigmas still surrounding divorce, therapy, mental health, and more in Asia. Asia may lag the West in this regard – for now – but there is a quiet revolution afoot and Heiliczer is at the vanguard, helping to transform the mental health landscape.

From toxic offices and complex relationships, boardroom power and bedroom failure, doomed marriages and ill-advised affairs, workaholism, loneliness, lies; these are struggles more common than many of us care to admit. Heiliczer lays them all bare through the prism of culture and is expert in understanding what makes those embroiled in them tick.