Words Against the Void: Poems by an Existential Psychologist Paperback – August 1, 2008

Tom Greening was my teacher many years ago at the Saybrook Institute. He was the first person to suggest that I write a book about eating disorders. I didn't follow through on that suggestion for decades, but finally I wrote my book. It got published and is out in the world.Tom's poetry is something like that suggestion to me. He gets to the deepest point quickly, but you might have to let it sink down into your psyche for a while before it rises up bringing you new awareness about yourself, the world and the human condition.You can read a few poems at a time. I think that's best when reading poetry. But, you can get yourself a comfortable chair in your living room or garden or on the beach and read through them all, letting them play with your psyche and touch your sense of humor or your heart or both.Joanna Poppink, MFTLos Angeles psychotherapistauthor of Healing Your Hungry Heart: recovering from your eating disorder

Tom Greening has been around awhile, a humanistic psychologist at least from the 1960's. That's when I first became aware of him. However, I didn't know he was a poet. A fun poet, it appears, but acutely serious about the human condition. He writes a kind of doggerel and hits nerve after nerve. In many of his poems, he has the voice of one who is forever elsewhere, not part of what ordinarily passes as the good life or "normal". He prefers his symtoms and problematic being to the make believe of health. Don't deprive yourself of this treat. He gets underneath the mask of sanity to all the places you know you live but dare not show (or admit). This is wisdom literature of a special kind. Perhaps in lineage of Moliere - nothing is left standing. A paradox is, while nothing is left standing, you find relief, at last able to breathe without the straitjacket of normalcy tightening. A paradox that this Chaplenesque confession, make you feel freer.Michael EigenAuthor, Contact With the Depths and Faith and Transformation

Tom Greening's Words Against the Void: Poems by an Existential Psychologist is a delightful book of poetry that repeatedly made me laugh out loud! With an ear for the absurd and the profound, Tom accurately and often hilariously skewers the pretensions of academic psychology and conveys refreshing insights about the practice of psychotherapy and the human condition. He gives Ogden Nash a run for his money any day! A thoroughly enjoyable read!